Materials science articles within Nature

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  • News & Views |

    Waste plastics contain immiscible polymers, making recycling challenging. A new additive enables the thermal reprocessing of mixed plastics into recyclable, high-performance materials.

    • Mathieu L. Lepage
    •  & Jeremy E. Wulff

  • Article |

    The authors develop a strategy that allows the diffusion limit of ions in water to be approached for large-area, free-standing, synthetic membranes using covalently bonded polymer frameworks with rigidity-confined ion channels.

    • Peipei Zuo
    • , Chunchun Ye
    •  & Tongwen Xu

  • Article |

    A new compatibilization strategy installs dynamic crosslinkers into several classes of binary, ternary and postconsumer immiscible polymer mixtures in situ, with the resulting compatibilized dynamic thermosets exhibiting intrinsic reprocessability and enhanced tensile strength and creep resistance.

    • Ryan W. Clarke
    • , Tobias Sandmeier
    •  & Eugene Y.-X. Chen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The authors develop a new oxide-dispersion-strengthened NiCoCr-based alloy using a model-driven alloy design approach and laser-based additive manufacturing, showing how such designs can provide superior compositions using far fewer resources than previous methods.

    • Timothy M. Smith
    • , Christopher A. Kantzos
    •  & John W. Lawson

  • Research Briefing |

    An innovative approach has been developed to break down plastic polymers into their monomer building blocks. It uses a continuous melting, wicking, vaporization and reaction process in a porous carbon-bilayer structure, and can convert two model plastic polymers to their monomers at high yields without a catalyst.

  • Article |

    A depolymerization method is described that uses electrified spatiotemporal heating to selectively generate monomers from the commodity plastics polypropylene and poly(ethylene terephthalate), allowing control over the pyrolysis of plastic waste and reducing the formation of side products.

    • Qi Dong
    • , Aditya Dilip Lele
    •  & Liangbing Hu

  • Research Briefing |

    Quantum materials can host exotic phases of matter in which electrons form unusual collective states. Scientists have struggled to observe the quantization that these electronic states are expected to show, but this phenomenon has now been detected in heavy states at the surface of a superconducting quantum material.

  • News & Views |

    A molecular process called singlet fission might boost solar-cell efficiency, but the mechanism must first be determined. A technique that probes molecules undergoing this process finally reveals the excited states involved.

    • Andrew J. Musser
    •  & Hannah Stern

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Time- and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy is used to observe the primary step of singlet fission with orbital resolution indicating a charge-transfer mediated mechanism with a hybridization of states in the lowest bright singlet exciton.

    • Alexander Neef
    • , Samuel Beaulieu
    •  & Ralph Ernstorfer

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A porous organic crystal readily and reversibly adsorbs water, with dehydration occurring well below the freezing point of water, which could be seen by a change in colour.

    • Alan C. Eaby
    • , Dirkie C. Myburgh
    •  & Leonard J. Barbour

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A Dirac plasma in high-mobility graphene shows anomalous magnetotransport and giant magnetoresistance that reaches more than 100 per cent in a low magnetic field at room temperature.

    • Na Xin
    • , James Lourembam
    •  & Alexey I. Berdyugin

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A single-element ferroelectric state is observed in a black phosphorus-like bismuth layer, in which the ordered charge transfer and the regular atom distortion between sublattices happen simultaneously and ferroelectric switching is further visualized experimentally.

    • Jian Gou
    • , Hua Bai
    •  & Andrew Thye Shen Wee

  • Article |

    By creating nanosized grains and defects in lanthanum trihydride, its electronic conductivity can be suppressed, transforming it into a superionic conductor at −40 °C with a record high H− conductivity.

    • Weijin Zhang
    • , Jirong Cui
    •  & Ping Chen

  • Article |

    Suppression of shallow traps responsible for dark count rates in polycrystalline methylammonium lead triiodide using diphenyl sulfide enables the production of metal-halide perovskite photon-counting detectors that allow sensitive detection of γ-ray spectra.

    • Ying Zhou
    • , Chengbin Fei
    •  & Jinsong Huang

  • Article |

    A LaCl3-based lithium superionic conductor is developed that has excellent interfacial compatibility with lithium metal electrodes, with its optimized Li0.388Ta0.238La0.475Cl3 electrolyte exhibiting good Li+ conductivity and low activation energy.

    • Yi-Chen Yin
    • , Jing-Tian Yang
    •  & Hong-Bin Yao

  • Research Briefing |

    The number of distinguishable conductance levels in memristor devices — electronic components that store information without power — has been limited by noise. An understanding of the source of the noise, and development of an effective denoising process, have now enabled 2,048 conductance levels to be achieved in memristors in large arrays fabricated in a chip factory.

  • Article |

    Tracking the formation of cubic ice (ice Ic) using transmission electron microscopy and low-dose imaging shows preferential nucleation of ice Ic at low-temperature interfaces and two types of stacking disorder.

    • Xudan Huang
    • , Lifen Wang
    •  & Xuedong Bai

  • Article |

    Chips with 256 × 256 memristor arrays that were monolithically integrated on complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) circuits in a commercial foundry achieved 2,048 conductance levels in individual memristors.

    • Mingyi Rao
    • , Hao Tang
    •  & J. Joshua Yang

  • Article |

    A self-assembled monolayer of (4-(7H-dibenzo[c,g]carbazol-7-yl)butyl)phosphonic acid is integrated in wide-bandgap perovskite solar cells, which enables a high power conversion efficiency and low open-circuit voltage deficiency, as well as efficient centimetre-scale all-perovskite tandem solar cells.

    • Rui He
    • , Wanhai Wang
    •  & Dewei Zhao

  • Article
    | Open Access

    High-integration-density 2D–CMOS hybrid microchips for memristive applications are made demonstrating in-memory computation and electrical response suitable for the implementation of spiking neural networks representing an advance towards integration of 2D materials in microelectronic products and memristive applications.

    • Kaichen Zhu
    • , Sebastian Pazos
    •  & Mario Lanza

  • Article |

    The epitaxial synthesis of high-density, vertically aligned arrays of two-dimensional (2D) fin-oxide heterostructures is described, enabling the fabrication of 2D fin field-effect transistors with high electron mobility and desirable low-power specifications.

    • Congwei Tan
    • , Mengshi Yu
    •  & Hailin Peng

  • News & Views |

    Particles that self-assemble from nanoribbons into bow-tie-shaped structures can be tailored to change the degree of their twist. A search for how best to quantify this twist homes in on a measure of how the bow ties respond to light.

    • Bart Kahr

  • Article |

    Self-limited assembly of 'imperfect' chiral nanoparticles enables formation of bowtie-shaped microparticles with size monodispersity and continuously variable chirality to be used for printing photonically active metasurfaces.

    • Prashant Kumar
    • , Thi Vo
    •  & Nicholas A. Kotov

  • Article |

    Perovskite LEDs with exceptional performance at high brightness are demonstrated achieving an operational half-lifetime of 32 hours, an important step towards commercialization opening up new opportunities beyond conventional LED technologies, such as perovskite electrically pumped lasers.

    • Yuqi Sun
    • , Lishuang Ge
    •  & Neil C. Greenham

  • Research Briefing |

    The compatibility of a material with its environment is important for real-world applications. A framework has been developed to translate the amino-acid sequence of segments of proteins into engineered synthetic polymers, enabling the creation of ensembles of polymers with properties matching those of mixtures of proteins.

  • News & Views |

    A hydrogen-rich compound has taken the lead in the race for a material that can conduct electricity with zero resistance at room temperature and ambient pressure — the conditions required for many technological applications.

    • ChangQing Jin
    •  & David Ceperley

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Information from natural protein libraries was extracted and used to design heteropolymer ensembles as mixtures of disordered, partially folded and folded proteins, providing valuable guiding principles to synthetically realize protein properties.

    • Zhiyuan Ruan
    • , Shuni Li
    •  & Ting Xu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A virtual process game to benchmark the performance of humans and computers for the fabrication of semiconductors leads to a strategy combining human expert design with optimization algorithms to improve semiconductor process development.

    • Keren J. Kanarik
    • , Wojciech T. Osowiecki
    •  & Richard A. Gottscho

  • Article |

    A class of dielectric copolymers called ladderphanes is shown to outperform existing dielectric polymers and composites, with high discharged energy density and charge–discharge efficiency even at temperatures up to 200 °C.

    • Jie Chen
    • , Yao Zhou
    •  & Qing Wang

  • Article |

    In optimally doped Nd0.8Sr0.2NiO2H epitaxial film, combined state-of-the-art experimental and theoretical approaches show abundant hydrogen with zero resistivity, and its critical role in superconductivity in epitaxial infinite-layer nickelates.

    • Xiang Ding
    • , Charles C. Tam
    •  & Liang Qiao

  • Article |

    Varying growth temperatures enables the tuning of the degree of disorder, which is fully described by the absence/presence of medium-range order and temperature-dependent densities of nanocrystallites, and electrical conductivity in amorphous monolayer carbon films.

    • Huifeng Tian
    • , Yinhang Ma
    •  & Lei Liu

  • News & Views |

    Two microscopy techniques have been merged into a tool for twisting ultrathin sheets of atoms relative to each other. The approach offers a new angle for studying the electronic properties of exotic layered materials.

    • Rebeca Ribeiro-Palau

  • Article |

    By using new on-chip terahertz spectroscopy techniques to measure the absorption spectra of a graphene microribbon as well as the energy waves close to charge neutrality, hydrodynamic collective excitations are observed.

    • Wenyu Zhao
    • , Shaoxin Wang
    •  & Feng Wang

  • Research Briefing |

    In current stretchable electronic devices, connection points between modules are made using commercially available pastes and break easily under mechanical deformation. An innovative connection interface has been developed to enable robust stretchable devices to be reliably assembled in a Lego‑like manner by simply pressing the interfaces of two modules together without pastes.

  • Article |

    A universal interface connects soft, rigid and encapsulation modules together to form robust, stretchable devices in a plug-and-play manner by pressing without using pastes, which will simplify and accelerate development of on-skin and implantable devices.

    • Ying Jiang
    • , Shaobo Ji
    •  & Xiaodong Chen

  • Article |

    A study describes a wood-based, three-tailed, biodegradable seed carrier that self-drills into the ground in response to moisture fluctuations with a success rate higher than that of natural self-drilling seeds.

    • Danli Luo
    • , Aditi Maheshwari
    •  & Lining Yao

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