Materials chemistry articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Minor variations in synthesis conditions can redirect crystallization pathways through different nonequilibrium intermediates. Here, the authors present a theoretical framework to predict which polymorphs appear during MnO2 precipitation, which is validated by in situ X-ray scattering of reaction progression.

    • Bor-Rong Chen
    • , Wenhao Sun
    •  & Laura T. Schelhas

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Water splitting by nanostructured, abundant catalysts provides a renewable means to make carbon neutral fuels, but the ideal material morphology and composition remain uncertain. Here, the authors prepare superaerophobic, multi-metallic sulfide nanotube arrays as bifunctional water splitting catalysts.

    • Haoyi Li
    • , Shuangming Chen
    •  & Xun Wang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Two dimensional (2D) metal-organic frameworks have demonstrated unique photophysical properties compared to their bulk analogs. Here, the authors demonstrate that exfoliation of 2D MOFs can suppress interlayer exciton-related emission, allowing for modulation of the overall emission color and switching of optical memory states.

    • Wei-Ming Liao
    • , Jian-Hua Zhang
    •  & Cheng-Yong Su

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Generating artificial cells able to carry out metabolic activities out-of-equilibrium is a current challenge in synthetic biology. Here the authors use a microfluidic platform for integration and analysis of minimal metabolic reactions in artificial microcompartments formed of water-in-oil droplets.

    • Thomas Beneyton
    • , Dorothee Krafft
    •  & Jean-Christophe Baret

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In layered inorganic materials lattice distortions can couple to break inversion symmetry and drive improper ferroelectricity, but in perovskites, symmetry prohibits such an effect. Here, the authors use group-theoretical analysis to provide crystal engineering design principles for improper ferroelectricity in molecular perovskites.

    • Hanna L. B. Boström
    • , Mark S. Senn
    •  & Andrew L. Goodwin

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The recently introduced glass and liquid states of metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) provide opportunities to design and explore new properties for this class of material. Here, the authors show that a MOF liquid can be blended with another MOF component to produce domain-structured MOF glasses with single, tailorable glass transitions.

    • Louis Longley
    • , Sean M. Collins
    •  & Thomas D. Bennett

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Peptoids are promising crystallization agents, as they offer the molecular recognition capabilities of proteins and peptides but with higher stability and synthetic tunability. Here, the authors show that sequence-defined peptoids can controllably template the formation and shape evolution of gold nanostructures with defined morphologies.

    • Feng Yan
    • , Lili Liu
    •  & Chun-Long Chen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Diffusion of molecules in crowded environment is important for various living systems, but the dynamics of charged molecules in charged matrices remains still unexplored. Here the authors report a dynamics of DNA and polyelectrolytes in a charged hydrogel where the guest molecules do not diffuse but experience topologically frustrated dynamics.

    • Di Jia
    •  & Murugappan Muthukumar

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Unlike synthetic hydrogels, biological gels are made of fibrous networks which give rise to unique properties, such as high porosity and mechanical responsiveness. Here the authors use polyisocyanide-based gels and selectively crosslink inside the bundles to lock the fibrous network and thus control the architecture and the mechanics.

    • Daniël C. Schoenmakers
    • , Alan E. Rowan
    •  & Paul H. J. Kouwer

  • Article
    | Open Access

    While zeolites are industrially relevant as molecular sieves and catalysts, their growth mechanisms remain widely debated. Here, Rimer and colleagues probe the crystallization pathway of zeolite LTA with spatiotemporal resolution, identifying a distinctive nonclassical pathway, and demonstrating that growth is highly dependent on synthetic conditions.

    • Manjesh Kumar
    • , Madhuresh K. Choudhary
    •  & Jeffrey D. Rimer

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Two-dimensional, organic-inorganic hybrid perovskites have sustained research interest due to attractive optoelectronic and excitonic properties. Here, Guo et al. systematically investigate coherent acoustic phonon transport versus layer thickness in these materials with strong acoustic impedance mismatch

    • Peijun Guo
    • , Constantinos C. Stoumpos
    •  & Richard D. Schaller

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Nanofiltration membranes are important for water desalination technologies, but designing membranes that achieve both high permeance and high salt rejection remains challenging. Here, the authors use sacrificial nanoparticles in the membrane fabrication process, leading to crumpled structures with ultrahigh permeance.

    • Zhenyi Wang
    • , Zhangxin Wang
    •  & Jian Jin

  • Article
    | Open Access

    DNA and RNA G-quadruplexes can stack to form higher-order structures called G-wires. Here the authors report high-resolution AFM images of higher-order DNA G-quadruplexes in aqueous solution that could impact the design of G-wire based nanodevices and the understanding of G-wires in biology.

    • Krishnashish Bose
    • , Christopher J. Lech
    •  & Anh Tuân Phan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    How metal nanoclusters evolve in size is poorly understood, particularly at the atomic level. Here, the authors use mass spectrometry to study the size conversion dynamics between two isoelectronic gold nanoclusters with atomic resolution, revealing that the growth reaction proceeds through a distinct balanced equation.

    • Qiaofeng Yao
    • , Victor Fung
    •  & Jianping Xie

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Perylene diimide-bithiophene macrocycles are electroactive and shape-persistent hosts. Here, the authors describe their self-assembly into a cellular organic semiconducting film whose voids are electrically sensitive to different guests, and which can function as the active layer in a field-effect transistor device.

    • Boyuan Zhang
    • , Raúl Hernández Sánchez
    •  & Colin Nuckolls

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Nanographenes in donor-acceptor π-systems generally serve as electron-donating moieties but the reversed structures are hardly reported. Here, the authors present a facile synthetic protocol towards reversed donor-acceptor nanographenes by amination and demonstrate fine property tuning by varying the donating ability of the aniline groups.

    • Yu-Min Liu
    • , Hao Hou
    •  & Klaus Müllen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Using ions of one polarity to form functional layers on surfaces is usually challenging because of counter ions which are inevitably present in the condensed phase. Here the authors demonstrate accumulation of mass-selected anions and neutral molecules from the gas phase to form a self-organizing liquid-like layer on a surface.

    • Jonas Warneke
    • , Martin E. McBriarty
    •  & Julia Laskin

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Assembly of higher-order artificial vesicles can unlock new applications. Here, the authors use optical tweezers to construct user-defined 2D and 3D architectures of chemically distinct vesicles and demonstrate inter-vesicle communication and light-enabled compartment merging.

    • Guido Bolognesi
    • , Mark S. Friddin
    •  & Yuval Elani

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Nested structures are common throughout nature and art, yet remain challenging synthetic targets in supramolecular chemistry. Here, the authors design multitopic terpyridine ligands that coordinate into nested concentric hexagons, and show that these discrete supramolecules display potent antimicrobial activity.

    • Heng Wang
    • , Xiaomin Qian
    •  & Xiaopeng Li

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Compared to thin films and other geometries, nanorods can exhibit particularly high performance in solute-intercalation-based energy and information storage devices. Here, the authors use in situ electron microscopy and spectroscopy to study the hydrogenation of palladium nanorods, revealing relationships between nanorod structure and device cyclability and capacity.

    • Fariah Hayee
    • , Tarun C. Narayan
    •  & Jennifer A. Dionne

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Effective band-gap engineering of armchair graphene nanoribbons calls for control over both width and edge structure. Here, the authors report a modular synthesis of narrow N = 6 armchair graphene nanoribbons whose edges can be unsymmetrically modified with heteroarenes, introducing a simple way to tune band gap.

    • Gang Li
    • , Ki-Young Yoon
    •  & Guangbin Dong

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Metal-organic frameworks are typically characterized by a variety of techniques, but most only provide information on properties as an average of a bulk sample. Here, Wuttke and colleagues demonstrate that fluorescence imaging and lifetime analysis allows access to local information on defects and functional groups.

    • Waldemar Schrimpf
    • , Juncong Jiang
    •  & Stefan Wuttke

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Porous TiO2 materials are attractive for energy-related applications owing to their accessible active sites, but suffer from poor stability. Here the authors synthesize a highly stable and porous metal–organic framework containing polymeric 1D Ti–O subunits, which displays a high condensation degree and high photoconductivity.

    • Sujing Wang
    • , Takashi Kitao
    •  & Christian Serre

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Uranium extraction is important for both uranium recovery and nuclear waste management. Here, inspired by the high sensitivity of proteins towards specific metal ions, Ma and colleagues demonstrate that introducing secondary coordination spheres into amidoxime-functionalized porous polymers can enhance their uranyl chelating abilities.

    • Qi Sun
    • , Briana Aguila
    •  & Shengqian Ma

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Pressure amplification phenomena have recently been observed in ordered mesoporous solids, but little is understood about this counter-intuitive behaviour. Here, Kaskel and colleagues demonstrate that crystal size can play an important role in modulating pressure amplification in metal-organic frameworks.

    • Simon Krause
    • , Volodymyr Bon
    •  & Stefan Kaskel

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Reactions in aqueous microdroplets can significantly differ from those in bulk. Here, the authors report microdroplets that not only accelerate gold nanoparticle formation by several orders of magnitude but also promote spontaneous nanostructure formation with no reducing agents or template.

    • Jae Kyoo Lee
    • , Devleena Samanta
    •  & Richard N. Zare

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Understanding host–guest interactions and structural changes within porous materials is crucial for enhancing gas storage properties. Here, the authors combine cryogenic loading of gases with high pressure crystallography and computational techniques to obtain atomistic detail of adsorption-induced structural and energetic changes in ZIF-8.

    • Claire L. Hobday
    • , Christopher H. Woodall
    •  & Stephen A. Moggach

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The emergence of thousands of metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) has created the challenge of finding promising structures for particular applications. Here, the authors present a tool for computer-aided material discovery where a large number of MOFs are screened, with the top-ranked structure synthesized for oxygen storage applications.

    • Peyman Z. Moghadam
    • , Timur Islamoglu
    •  & David Fairen-Jimenez

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Understanding why and how molecules transfer their chirality into helical superstructures, including crystals, remains a challenge. Here, the authors show that topological defects not only promote the growth, but also control the helical morphology of crystals formed by chiral rod-shaped particles.

    • Baeckkyoung Sung
    • , Alexis de la Cotte
    •  & Eric Grelet

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Suppression of quantum tunneling in molecular magnets is key for their magnetic behaviours to be exploitable. Here, the authors show that tuning the geometry of lanthanide single-ion magnets leads to a suppression of the quantum tunneling, finding a three-fold reduction of the tunnel splitting upon changing the crystal field symmetry.

    • Mikkel A. Sørensen
    • , Ursula B. Hansen
    •  & Jesper Bendix

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Harvesting water from the atmosphere is an important solution to water scarcity, but doing so in arid climates is highly challenging. Here, the authors develop a metal-organic framework-based water harvesting device that can deliver over 0.25 L of water per kg of adsorbent over a single cycle at relative humidities of 10–40% and at subzero dew points.

    • Hyunho Kim
    • , Sameer R. Rao
    •  & Evelyn N. Wang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Molecular doping is routinely used in organic semiconductor devices nowadays, but the physics at play remains unclarified. Tietze et al. describe it as a two-step process and show it costs little, energetically, to dissociate charge transfer complexes due to energetic disorder of organic semiconductors.

    • Max L. Tietze
    • , Johannes Benduhn
    •  & Karl Leo

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The study of the dissolution of polymer crystals is a challenging task. Here the authors use crystallization-driven self-assembly of coil-crystalline block copolymers as a trapping technique to track the change in length of 1D seed crystallites during annealing.

    • Gerald Guerin
    • , Paul A. Rupar
    •  & Mitchell A. Winnik

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Dye coating techniques for colored materials are often cost intensive or cause degradation of the material during processing. Here the authors demonstrate a fast, scalable and cost efficient plasma dye coating procedure, which allows for covalent immobilization of dye molecules on different polymer surfaces.

    • Lieselot De Smet
    • , Gertjan Vancoillie
    •  & Richard Hoogenboom

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Localized surface plasmon resonance can be exploited for a range of applications, but remains difficult to tailor in metal-organic nanostructures. Here the authors synthesize gold-polypyrrole nanorods and observe a unique extended surface plasmon resonance, which they find to be tunable through doping.

    • Insub Jung
    • , Minkyung Kim
    •  & Sungho Park

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Porous membranes show great promise for CO2 separation and capture, but are currently limited by a trade-off between permeance and selectivity. Here, the authors fabricate a bio-inspired, ultra-thin enzymatic liquid membrane that displays exceptional CO2 permeability and selectivity under ambient conditions.

    • Yaqin Fu
    • , Ying-Bing Jiang
    •  & C. Jeffrey Brinker

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Improved compressive elasticity was lately demonstrated for carbon aerogels but the problem of reversible stretchability remained a challenge. Here the authors use a hierarchical structure design and synergistic effects between carbon nanotubes and graphene to achieve high stretchability in carbon aerogels.

    • Fan Guo
    • , Yanqiu Jiang
    •  & Chao Gao

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Scalable graphene production from graphite via an intercalation-oxidation-reduction process is still hampered by low reproducibility and many lattice defects. Here, the authors show that reducing molecular friction by using highly crystalline graphite and mild oxidizing conditions is the key to high quality graphene.

    • Steffen Seiler
    • , Christian E. Halbig
    •  & Siegfried Eigler

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Electrochemically-gated graphene field-effect transistors show promise for sensing of charged species in real time. Here, the authors leverage the interplay between electrical in-plane transport and electrochemical activity to explore the sensing performance of hydrogenated graphene.

    • Lin Jiang
    • , Wangyang Fu
    •  & Grégory F. Schneider

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