Composites articles from across Nature Portfolio

Hypersonic vehicles experience extreme temperatures, high heat fluxes, and aggressive oxidizing environments. Here, the authors highlight key materials design principles for critical vehicle areas and strategies for advancing laboratory-scale materials to flight-ready components.

Recent high-profile concrete material failures, including the collapse of parts of public buildings in the UK, have highlighted the need for a greater understanding of the durability of concrete. Here, John Provis explores the need to recognise the complexity of concrete when planning both the research and application of this key construction material.

A recent study presents an approach for characterizing and quantifying the pore space in assemblies of particles, enabling research into pore-scale flow physics and insight into the interplay between the solid and void phases in granular materials.

Nature provides an endless source of inspiration for advanced materials, fuelled by evolutionary innovations over many millions of years. Capitalizing on this wealth of biological solutions requires an approach to materials innovation that is informed by a holistic understanding of multi-functional biological systems and leverages the defining feature of the natural world — diversity.

An elastic conductive ink — which is made of conductive fillers suspended in an emulsified elastomer matrix — can be used to print three-dimensional elastic conductors.

An article in Science Advances explains the mechanisms behind the durability of ancient Roman concrete.

The transition to climate-friendly cities has led to a renaissance of wood as a renewable building material. To prevent severe raw material shortages in the future, the material-first utilization of wood in long-living, resource-efficient engineered wood products and constructions will be key.