Research Highlights |
Featured
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News & Views |
When mica and water meet
A neat mode of operation of the atomic force microscope has been used to probe the interface between mica and water. The results help to settle a long-standing debate about the nature of this interface.
- Joost W. M. Frenken
- & Tjerk H. Oosterkamp
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News & Views |
Mind the helical crack
Catastrophic breakage of brittle materials such as ceramics is usually triggered by the rapid spreading of cracks. Computer simulations have now cracked the three-dimensional details of this process.
- Markus J. Buehler
- & Zhiping Xu
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News & Views |
Hydrocarbon superconductors
Superconductivity has been discovered in the materials that form when alkali metals react with a solid hydrocarbon. This is the first new class of organic, high-temperature superconductor in a decade.
- Matthew J. Rosseinsky
- & Kosmas Prassides
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Letter |
Simultaneous phase and size control of upconversion nanocrystals through lanthanide doping
Many technological materials are intentionally 'doped' with foreign elements to impart new and desirable properties, a classic example being the doping of semiconductors to tune their electronic behaviour. Here lanthanide doping is used to control the growth of nanocrystals, allowing for simultaneous tuning of the size, crystallographic phase and optical properties of the hybrid material.
- Feng Wang
- , Yu Han
- & Xiaogang Liu
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Research Highlights |
Condensed matter: Cutting it fine
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Letter |
Above-room-temperature ferroelectricity in a single-component molecular crystal
Ferroelectrics are electro-active materials that can store and switch their polarity, sense temperature changes, interchange electric and mechanical functions, and manipulate light. Subtle changes in the topology of certain chemical bonds have long been identified as a possible route for achieving ferroelectricity in organic molecular crystals. Ferroelectricity above room temperature is now demonstrated by applying an electric field to coherently align the molecular polarities in crystalline croconic acid.
- Sachio Horiuchi
- , Yusuke Tokunaga
- & Yoshinori Tokura
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Research Highlights |
Materials science: Small, strong and supple
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Research Highlights |
Applied physics: Speedier than silicon
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Letter |
Directional water collection on wetted spider silk
Many plants and animals make use of biological surfaces with structural features at the micro- and nanometre-scale that control the interaction with water. The appearance of dew drops on spider webs is an illustration of how they are one such material capable of efficiently collecting water from air. The water-collecting ability of the capture silk of the Uloborus walckenaerius spider is now shown to be the result of a unique fibre structure that forms after wetting.
- Yongmei Zheng
- , Hao Bai
- & Lei Jiang
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News & Views |
Nanothermal trumpets
The thermal process known as Joule heating, which often plagues electronic devices, has been turned to good use: making devices that can produce sound as well as reproduce music and speech.
- Rama Venkatasubramanian
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Research Highlights |
Material science: Speedy silk imprinting
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Research Highlights |
Biomaterials: Super snail shells
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Letter |
Strong crystal size effect on deformation twinning
Although deformation twinning in crystals controls the mechanical behaviour of many materials, its size-dependence has not been explored. Using micro-compression and in situ nano-compression experiments, the stress required for deformation twinning is now found to increase drastically with decreasing sample size of a titanium alloy single crystal, until the sample size is reduced to one micrometre; below this point, deformation twinning is replaced by dislocation plasticity.
- Qian Yu
- , Zhi-Wei Shan
- & Evan Ma
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Letter |
High-water-content mouldable hydrogels by mixing clay and a dendritic molecular binder
In the search to reduce our dependency on fossil-fuel energy, new plastic materials that are less dependent on petroleum are being developed, with water-based gels — hydrogels — representing one possible solution. Here, a mixture of water, 3% clay and a tiny amount of a special organic binder is shown to form a transparent hydrogel that can be moulded into shape-persistent, free-standing objects and that rapidly and completely self-heals when damaged.
- Qigang Wang
- , Justin L. Mynar
- & Takuzo Aida
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News & Views |
Membrane magic
The use of magnetic fields to assemble particles into membranes provides a powerful tool for exploring the physics of self-assembly and a practical method for synthesizing functional materials.
- Jack F. Douglas
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Research Highlights |
Materials science: Sequencing with carbon
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Letter |
Slip-stick and the evolution of frictional strength
From earthquakes to hard drives, frictional motion and its strength are involved in a wide range of phenomena. The strength of an interface that divides two sliding bodies is determined by both the real contact area and the contacts' shear strength. By continuous measurements of the concurrent local evolution of the real contact area and the corresponding interface motion from the first microseconds when contact detachment occurs, frictional strength is now characterized from short to long timescales.
- Oded Ben-David
- , Shmuel M. Rubinstein
- & Jay Fineberg
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News Feature |
Smart grids: The energy storage problem
Renewable energy is not a viable option unless energy can be stored on a large scale. David Lindley looks at five ways to do that.
- David Lindley