Volume 19 Issue 9, September 2020

Shirakawa, MacDiarmid and Heeger received the 2000 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of conducting polymers. Here we summarize the impact of (semi)conducting polymers on fundamental research, synthetic accessibility at scale, industrial applicability and the future.

Controlling the handedness of magnetic excitations in magnetic materials is crucial for magnonic applications. Ferrimagnets provide a promising route.

The lifetime of plasmonic excitations in semiconducting carbon nanotubes is found to strongly depend on the carrier density, offering a platform to study non-conventional one-dimensional electron dynamics and realize integrated nanophotonic devices.

A crystallographic brick wall design for polycrystalline dielectric ceramics now allows the application of high electric fields at minimal misfit strain, yielding supreme reliability and high energy density.

Organic neuromorphic devices are now able to take direct input from cellular neurotransmitter release.

Functional single-cell liver hemi-canaliculi have been generated in a synthetic microenvironment using a reductionist approach. It is shown that the interaction between the extracellular matrix and static cadherin is sufficient to develop an apicobasal polarity independently of the contact with neighbouring cells.

Chiral surfaces are fundamental materials for the preparation of enantiomerically pure pharmaceuticals. This Perspective discusses the recent advances in the fabrication of chiral surfaces and the progress towards scalable, high-surface-area, enantiomerically pure surfaces.

Thermoplasmonics is based on the use of plasmonic nanoparticles as sources of heat remotely controlled by light. This Review discusses its current applications and challenges in a broad range of scientific fields, from nanomedicine to hot-electron chemistry and nanofluidics.

The spectral range of long-lived and confined phonon polaritons in a polar van der Waals crystal is shown to be tunable by intercalation of Na atoms, expanding their potential for nanophotonic applications in the mid-infrared domain.

A cell culture interfacing an organic neuromorphic device in a microfluidic system reversibly modifies the device synaptic weight through chemical reactions mediated by the release of dopamine, a neurotransmitter used in biological synapses.

Transport measurements and calculations show that WTe₂ may be a higher-order topological insulator with topological hinge states.

Right- and left-handed spin-wave modes are identified in ferrimagnets, and their dynamics are revealed.

Electric-field tunable plasmonic excitations in semiconducting carbon nanotubes are shown to behave consistently with the nonlinear Luttinger liquid theory, providing a platform to study non-conventional one-dimensional electron dynamics and realize integrated nanophotonic devices.

Radiation-induced segregation is widely observed in metals. Here it is discovered that radiation-induced segregation also occurs in a ceramic, with carbon atoms in silicon carbide segregating to the grain boundaries under irradiation.

The energy density of dielectric ceramic capacitors is limited by low breakdown fields. Here, by considering the anisotropy of electrostriction in perovskites, it is shown that <111>-textured Na_0.5Bi_0.5TiO₃–Sr_0.7Bi_0.2TiO₃ ceramics can sustain higher electrical fields and achieve an energy density of 21.5 J cm⁻³.

Developing cheap and sustainable aqueous electrolytes with a wide voltage window is key to achieving safe and high-energy Li-ion batteries. An electrolyte using the polymer poly(ethylene glycol) as a crowding agent to decrease water activity achieves a wide operation window at low salt concentration.

Melamine is shown to associate with two poly(thymine) strands, forming antiparallel duplexes that can be used for the dynamic assembly of DNA-based nanostructures.

Atomic force microscopy indentation measurements of cells cultured on soft substrates may result in an underestimation of cell stiffness. A model has now been developed that takes this soft substrate effect into account, revealing that cortical cell stiffness is largely independent of substrate mechanics.

The polarity of primary hepatocytes has now been shown to be inducible at the single-cell level by passive artificial micro-niches, indicating that the early development of polarity occurs largely independently of the types and response of the neighbouring cells.