Materials science articles within Nature

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  • News & Views |

    Rubbery polymers have been made in which damage is healed by exposure to light. The healing mechanism allows localized, on-demand repair, and might help to extend the lifetimes of materials for many applications. See Letter p.334

    • Nancy R. Sottos
    •  & Jeffrey S. Moore

  • News & Views |

    Solvent vapour annealing processes are used to optimize the material properties of thin films of semiconducting polymers used in electronic devices. One such process has now been examined at the molecular level.

    • Yi Fu
    •  & Joseph R. Lakowicz

  • News & Views |

    An innovative technique has been developed to manufacture graphene transistors that operate at radio frequencies and low temperatures. The process brings the devices closer to applications. See Letter p.74

    • Frank Schwierz

  • Comment |

    Combining Maxwell's equations with Einstein's general relativity promises perfect images and cloaking devices, explains Ulf Leonhardt.

    • Ulf Leonhardt

  • News & Views |

    Spherical micelles can aggregate into highly organized structures. New micelle arrangements mimic known atomic crystals, both periodic and aperiodic, and provide evidence for a material with 18-fold rotational symmetry.

    • Sharon C. Glotzer
    •  & Michael Engel

  • Letter |

    Inelastic light scattering spectroscopy is a powerful tool in materials science to probe elementary excitations. In a quantum-mechanical picture, these excitations are generated by the incident photons via intermediate electronic transitions. It is now shown that it is possible to manipulate these intermediate 'quantum pathways' using electrostatically doped graphene. A surprising effect is revealed where blocking one pathway results in an increased intensity, unveiling a mechanism of destructive quantum interference between different Raman pathways. The study refines understanding of Raman scattering in graphene and indicates the possibility of controlling quantum pathways to produce unusual inelastic light scattering phenomena.

    • Chi-Fan Chen
    • , Cheol-Hwan Park
    •  & Feng Wang

  • News & Views |

    Using a microfluidic device, tiny polymeric capsules have been made in which different compounds can be isolated in separate, membrane-bound compartments — a prerequisite for the development of artificial cell aggregates.

    • Takamasa Harada
    •  & Dennis E. Discher

  • Letter |

    Angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) is widely used to study the electronic structure of a wide range of correlated materials. Time-resolved ARPES allows the study of the response of such electronic features on ultrafast timescales; this paper now adds an exciting new dimension by using high photon energies that allow the study of ultrafast dynamics at high momenta, where often the most interesting fundamental phenomena occur. The technique is applied to the charge density wave material 1T-TiSe2 and it is shown with stroboscopic imaging of the electronic band structure at high momentum that atomic-scale periodic long-range order collapses on a surprisingly short timescale of 20 femtoseconds.

    • Timm Rohwer
    • , Stefan Hellmann
    •  & Michael Bauer

  • News & Views |

    Metamaterials are best known for their ability to bend light in the opposite direction to that of all materials found in nature. A hidden ability of these man-made materials has now been discovered. See Letter p.369

    • Xiang Zhang

  • Letter |

    In the area of metamaterials it is shown that electromagnetic properties can be achieved that are not attainable with natural materials. The main research efforts have been directed towards experimentally realizing materials with negative refractive index, but to extend the potential and design flexibility for novel 'transformation optics' applications, it is of considerable interest to produce a material with unnaturally high refractive index. A broadband, flexible terahertz metamaterial with unprecedented high refractive index, reaching a value of 38.6, is now demonstrated.

    • Muhan Choi
    • , Seung Hoon Lee
    •  & Bumki Min

  • Letter |

    In a significant step forward in complexity and capability for bottom-up assembly of nanoelectronic circuits, this study demonstrates scalable and programmable logic tiles based on semiconductor nanowire transistor arrays. The same logic tile, consisting 496 configurable transistor nodes in an area of about 960 μm2, could be programmed and operated as, among other functions, a full-adder, full-subtractor and multiplexer. The promise is that these logic tiles can be cascaded to realize fully integrated nanoprocessors with computing, memory and addressing capabilities.

    • Hao Yan
    • , Hwan Sung Choe
    •  & Charles M. Lieber

  • Letter |

    Scanning probe techniques such as atomic force microscopy can be readily harnessed to prepare nanoscale structures with exquisite resolution, but are not in general suited for high-throughput patterning. Techniques based on contact printing, on the other hand, offer high throughput over large areas, but can't compete on resolution. Now, an approach is described that offers the best of both worlds: by attaching an array of hard, scanning-probe-like silicon tips to a flexible elastomeric substrate (similar to those used in contact printing), it is possible to rapidly create arbitrary patterns with sub-50-nm resolution over centimetre-scale areas.

    • Wooyoung Shim
    • , Adam B. Braunschweig
    •  & Chad A. Mirkin

  • News & Views |

    Plasmonic hotspots — nanometre-sized crevices that permit the detection of single molecules — are too small to be imaged with conventional microscopes. They can now be probed using super-resolution fluorescence microscopy. See Letter p.385

    • Martin Moskovits

  • Letter |

    On rough metallic surfaces hotspots appear under optical illumination that concentrate light to tens of nanometres. This effect can be used to detect molecules, as weak fluorescence signals are strongly enhanced by the hotspots. Such hotspots are associated with localized electromagnetic modes, caused by the randomness of the surface texture, but the detailed profile of the local electromagnetic field is unknown. Here, an ingenious approach is described, making use of the Brownian motion of single molecules to probe the local field. The study succeeds in imaging the fluorescence enhancement profile of single hotspots on the surface of aluminium thin-film and silver nanoparticle clusters with accuracy down to one nanometre, and finds that the field distribution in a hotspot follows an exponential decay.

    • Hu Cang
    • , Anna Labno
    •  & Xiang Zhang

  • News & Views |

    Stacking two oxide insulators together is known to yield a conducting system at the interface between the oxides. But the discovery that simply cleaving such an insulator yields the same outcome is unexpected. See Letter p.189

    • Elbio Dagotto

  • Letter |

    An exotic two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) forms at oxide interfaces based on SrTiO3, but the precise nature of the 2DEG has remained elusive. In a systematic study using angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES), new insights into the electronic structure of the 2DEG are obtained. The findings shed light on previous observations in SrTiO3-based heterostructures and suggest that different forms of electron confinement at the surface of SrTiO3 lead to essentially the same 2DEG.

    • A. F. Santander-Syro
    • , O. Copie
    •  & M. J. Rozenberg

  • Letter |

    Many biomineralized tissues (such as teeth and bone) are hybrid inorganic–organic materials whose properties are determined by their convoluted internal structures. Now, using a chiton tooth as an example, this study shows how the internal structural and chemical complexity of such biomaterials and their synthetic analogues can be elucidated using pulsed-laser atom-probe tomography.

    • Lyle M. Gordon
    •  & Derk Joester

  • News & Views |

    Nanowires are candidates for enabling the exchange of quantum information between light and matter. The rapid control of a single electron spin by solely electrical means brings this possibility closer. See Letter p.1084

    • David J. Reilly

  • Letter |

    Motion of electrons can influence their spins through a fundamental effect called the spin–orbit interaction. Here, a spin–orbit quantum bit (qubit) is implemented in an indium arsenide nanowire, which should offer significant advantages for quantum computing. The spin–orbit qubit is electrically controllable, and information can be stored in the spin. Moreover, nanowires can serve as one dimensional templates for scalable qubit registers, and are suited for both electronic and optical devices.

    • S. Nadj-Perge
    • , S. M. Frolov
    •  & L. P. Kouwenhoven

  • Letter |

    The unusual capability of solid crystalline materials to deform plastically (known as superplasticity) has been found in metals and even ceramics; however, no experimental studies have yet to demonstrate this behaviour in geological materials. It is now demonstrated that some synthetic rocks, which are good analogues for Earth's mantle, undergo homogeneous elongation up to 500% under subsolidus conditions. Calculations show that such superplastic flow in the mantle is inevitably accompanied by significant grain growth that can change fine-grained rocks to coarse-grained aggregates, resulting in increasing mantle viscosity and finally termination of superplastic flow.

    • Takehiko Hiraga
    • , Tomonori Miyazaki
    •  & Hidehiro Yoshida

  • News & Views |

    The structure of a mineral has been validated, ending the controversy about its potential usefulness as a model of an unusual magnetic lattice. This model might provide insight into superconductivity.

    • Mark A. de Vries
    •  & Andrew Harrison

  • News & Views |

    A neat study that involves placing colloidal particles on curved oil-glycerol interfaces reveals a new form of crystal defect. The defect is called a pleat, by analogy to the age-old type of fabric fold. See Letter p.947

    • Francesco Stellacci
    •  & Andreas Mortensen

  • Letter |

    Electron microscopy has advanced to the stage where individual elements can be identified with atomic resolution. Here it is shown to be possible to get fine-structure spectroscopic information of individual light atoms such as those of carbon, and so also probe their chemical state. This capability is illustrated by investigating the edges of a graphene sample, where it is possible to discriminate between single-, double- and triple-coordinated carbon atoms.

    • Kazu Suenaga
    •  & Masanori Koshino

  • Letter |

    Hexagons can easily tile a flat surface, but not a curved one. Defects with topological charge (such as heptagons and pentagons) make it easier to tile curved surfaces, such as soccer balls. Here, a new type of defect is reported that accommodates curvature in the same way as fabric pleats. The appearance of such defects on the negatively curved surfaces of stretched colloidal crystals are observed. The results will facilitate the exploration of general theories of defects in curved spaces, the engineering of curved structures and novel methods for soft lithography and directed self-assembly.

    • William T. M. Irvine
    • , Vincenzo Vitelli
    •  & Paul M. Chaikin

  • News & Views |

    Extensive mapping of local electronic structure in copper oxide superconductors reveals fluctuating stripe-like electron patterns that appear as a high-temperature precursor to superconductivity. See Letter p.677

    • Kathryn A. Moler

  • Letter |

    A long-standing question has been the interplay between pseudogap, which is generic to all hole doped copper oxide superconductors, and stripes, whose static form occurs in only one family of copper oxides over a narrow range of the phase diagram. This study reports observations of the spatial reorganization of electronic states with the onset of the pseudogap state at T* in the high temperature superconductor Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+x using scanning tunnelling microscopy. The onset of the pseudogap phase coincides with the appearance of electronic patterns that have the predicted characteristics of fluctuating stripes. The experiments indicate that stripes are a consequence of pseudogap behaviour rather than its cause.

    • Colin V. Parker
    • , Pegor Aynajian
    •  & Ali Yazdani

  • Feature |

    Nanomaterials have evolved from innovation to application — and the career possibilities have blossomed.

    • Corinna Wu

  • News & Views |

    A simple peptide that assembles into desirable nanoscale structures is a striking example of how the whole can be greater than the sum of its parts. What's more, the assembly process is controllably reversible.

    • Charlotte A. E. Hauser
    •  & Shuguang Zhang

  • Letter |

    The development of table-top femtosecond electron diffraction sources in recent years has opened up a new way to observe atomic motions in crystalline materials undergoing structural changes. Here, the technique is used to study the charge density wave material 1T-TaS2, where a modulation of the electron density is accompanied by a periodic lattice distortion. In this femtosecond electron diffraction experiment, where atomic motions are observed in response to a 140 femtosecond optical pulse, the periodic lattice distortion is found to collapse on an exceptionally fast timescale (about 250 femtoseconds), indicative of an electronically driven process involving a highly cooperative process.

    • Maximilian Eichberger
    • , Hanjo Schäfer
    •  & R. J. Dwayne Miller

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