Nanoscale materials articles within Nature Materials

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  • Review Article |

    Non-layered transition metal carbides (TMCs) and layered transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) can form various heterostructure configurations through chemical conversion. This Review highlights the progress in the fabrication and control of TMC/TMD heterostructures and the exotic properties arising from these interfaces.

    • Alexander J. Sredenschek
    • , David Emanuel Sanchez
    •  & Mauricio Terrones

  • Research Briefing |

    Single-crystal black phosphorus nanoribbons have been grown through chemical vapour transport, using black phosphorus nanoparticles as seeds. The nanoribbons orient exclusively along the zigzag direction and have good semiconductor properties that render them suitable for use as channel material in field-effect transistors.

  • News & Views |

    The atomic reconstruction and stacking arrangement in twisted trilayer graphene with a range of varying twist angles are elucidated by four-dimensional scanning transmission electron microscopy, revealing the hierarchical moiré of moiré superstructures that govern the structural symmetry at different length scales.

    • Ruichun Luo
    •  & Wu Zhou

  • Article |

    Single-crystal black phosphorus nanoribbons are grown uniformly on insulating substrates by chemical vapour transport growth with black phosphorus nanoparticles as seeds, demonstrating potential for application in nanoelectronic devices and the exploration of the exotic physics in black phosphorus.

    • Hongya Wang
    • , Yichen Song
    •  & Yuanbo Zhang

  • Perspective |

    Two-dimensional (2D) materials, despite their small thickness, can display chirality that enables prominent asymmetric optical, electrical transport, and magnetic properties. This Perspective discusses the intriguing physics enabled by the structural chirality and the possible ways to create and control chirality in 2D materials.

    • Hanyu Zhu
    •  & Boris I. Yakobson

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Active and stable catalysts to accelerate the transition from fossil fuel to renewable feedstocks, reduce energy consumption and minimize environmental footprints are needed. Electrocatalysts based on copper nanocrystals encapsulated in hybrid alumina shells stable against structural reconstruction during CO2 electroreduction are reported.

    • Petru P. Albertini
    • , Mark A. Newton
    •  & Raffaella Buonsanti

  • Article |

    A large Josephson diode effect has been reported at liquid-nitrogen temperatures in twisted flakes of Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+δ.

    • Sanat Ghosh
    • , Vilas Patil
    •  & Mandar M. Deshmukh

  • News & Views |

    Electronic moiré patterns can be imprinted remotely onto a target quantum material, inducing exotic interacting behaviour.

    • Arpit Arora
    •  & Justin C. W. Song

  • Article |

    Soft building blocks tend to be near spherical, limiting their packing structures to those found in metallic systems. Here the authors report the spontaneous generation of highly deformed mesoatoms using molecular pentagons and observe Frank–Kasper phases not found in metal alloys.

    • Xian-You Liu
    • , Xiao-Yun Yan
    •  & Stephen Z. D. Cheng

  • Article |

    Direct observation of noble gas structures has been achieved at room temperature using electron microscopy. This was enabled by trapping them between two layers of graphene, where they form two-dimensional clusters.

    • Manuel Längle
    • , Kenichiro Mizohata
    •  & Jani Kotakoski

  • Article |

    The local layer alignment in a wide range of trilayer graphene structures has been extracted by interferometric four-dimensional scanning transmission electron microscopy, uncovering the complex picture of lattice reconstruction in twisted trilayers.

    • Isaac M. Craig
    • , Madeline Van Winkle
    •  & D. Kwabena Bediako

  • Article |

    The metal monochalcogenides are a group of van der Waals layered semiconductors with ultra-high plasticity. It is now revealed that their plasticity is attributed to the ability to transform their stacking order or phases, coupled with the concurrent generation of a micro-crack network.

    • Lok Wing Wong
    • , Ke Yang
    •  & Jiong Zhao

  • Article |

    Biological tissues are extremely water rich but remain mechanically stiff, behaviour that is difficult to recapitulate in synthetic materials. Here the authors design a hydrogel/sponge hybrid material driven by a self-organized network of cyano-p-aramid nanofibres that combines these properties for biofunctional materials.

    • Minkyung Lee
    • , Hojung Kwak
    •  & Dongyeop X. Oh

  • Feature |

    Peng Wu, Tianyi Zhang, Jiadi Zhu, Tomás Palacios and Jing Kong discuss the reproducibility issues in the synthesis and device fabrication of two-dimensional transition metal dichalcogenides that need to be addressed to enable the lab-to-fab transition.

    • Peng Wu
    • , Tianyi Zhang
    •  & Jing Kong

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The self-assembly of metallic nanoparticles on oxide supports via metal exsolution relies on dopant transport, but strong electrostatic gradients and space charges typically control the properties of surfaces. The surface–dopant interaction is shown to be the main determining factor for the exsolution kinetics of nickel in a perovskite system.

    • Moritz L. Weber
    • , Břetislav Šmíd
    •  & Christian Lenser

  • News & Views |

    Engineered ligand shells on gold nanoclusters utilizing molecular motion improve the thermal conductance between the cluster and the solvent, increasing thermal stability and enhancing performance in the photothermal treatment of cancerous tumours.

    • Jacob L. Beckham
    •  & James M. Tour

  • News & Views |

    Orthogonally twisted CrSBr ferromagnetic monolayers with in-plane Ising anisotropies are found to exhibit multistep magnetoresistance switching with a magnetic hysteresis opening. This work emphasizes the role of spin dimensionality in two-dimensional magnets, and the potential of orthogonal and large-twist-angle van der Waals magnets.

    • Lan Wang

  • Article |

    Depositing textured functional materials on transparent conducting oxides remains a challenge. We demonstrate the formation of a coherent interface between a set of functional oxides and fluorine-doped-tin-oxide-based transparent conducting oxide substrate despite the lattice mismatch, owing to dimensional and chemical matching of oxygen sublattices at the interface.

    • Huiting Huang
    • , Jun Wang
    •  & Zhigang Zou

  • Research Briefing |

    Oxidation can degrade the properties and functionality of three-dimensional bulk metallic glasses. However, the formation of percolating oxide networks in metallic glass nanotubes or nanosheets can induce interesting properties, such as a recoverable strain of 10–20% and elastic modulus of 20–30 GPa, which are rarely observed in their bulk counterparts.

  • Letter |

    Oxidation normally deteriorates the mechanical properties of metals. But it is now shown that the formation of a percolating oxide network in metallic glass nanotubes can result in an unprecedented superelasticity of 14% at room temperature.

    • Fucheng Li
    • , Zhibo Zhang
    •  & Yong Yang

  • News & Views |

    Heat treatment can transform some moiré superlattices into fully commensurate bilayers, where atoms in opposite layers align perfectly with each other. This structural transformation gives rise to markedly brighter interlayer excitons.

    • Chun Hung Lui

  • News & Views |

    Hybridized electron or hole states across semiconducting van der Waals monolayers in heterotrilayer systems enable the emergence of quadrupolar excitons. Quadrupolar excitons, unlike their dipolar counterparts, have a tunable static dipole moment that responds nonlinearly under an applied electric field.

    • Elyse Barré
    • , Medha Dandu
    •  & Archana Raja

  • News & Views |

    Three protein interaction surfaces are computationally designed into one protein subunit to enable their accurate assembly into three-dimensional crystals with user-specified lattice architectures.

    • Eduardo Anaya-Plaza
    •  & Mauri A. Kostiainen

  • News & Views |

    The monolithic 3D integration of wafer-free all-2D-materials-based electronics can produce an AI processor.

    • Fang Wang
    •  & Weida Hu

  • Article |

    Gold nanoclusters show promise as photothermal materials, but are often thermally unstable. Here ligand engineering is used to integrate molecular rotors with gold nanoclusters to dissipate thermal energy and improve photothermal therapy performance.

    • Jing Chen
    • , Peilin Gu
    •  & Chunhai Fan

  • Article |

    The rational design and assembly of colloidal quasicrystals is achieved by exploring the hybridization of nanoscale decahedra nanoparticles functionalized with DNA linkers.

    • Wenjie Zhou
    • , Yein Lim
    •  & Chad A. Mirkin

  • News & Views |

    Terahertz photoconductivity measurements coupled with theoretical modelling reveals that thermal transient excitations to more delocalized states enhances hole mobility in organic molecular semiconductors.

    • Zhigang Shuai

  • Article |

    Membrane/catalyst systems in the oxidative coupling of methane are promising for their high product selectivity but suffer from low volumetric chemical conversion rates, high capital cost and optimizing performance. A dual-layer additive manufacturing process, based on phase inversion, is now proposed to optimize a hollow-fibre membrane/catalyst system.

    • James Wortman
    • , Valentina Omoze Igenegbai
    •  & Suljo Linic

  • Research Briefing |

    Self-healing behaviour in a nanotwinned diamond composite, at room temperature, has been quantitatively evaluated through tensile testing. The phenomenon is shown to arise from a transition of atomic interactions from repulsion to attraction and the formation of nanoscale diamond ‘osteoblasts’, in analogy to the process of bone healing in living organisms.

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Unit-cell-thick films of metal–organic frameworks with ordered porosity would be attractive for membrane applications as these thin systems combine large molecular flux with high selectivity. Here crystalline ZIF films are grown on a crystalline substrate with high H2/N2 gas separation performance.

    • Qi Liu
    • , Yurun Miao
    •  & Kumar Varoon Agrawal

  • Article |

    Dynamic disorder reduces the carrier mobility in organic semiconductors (OSs) to an extent that depends on their specific electronic band structure. Here the authors study the temperature-dependent hole mobility of two structurally similar OSs and find that thermal access to transiently delocalized states enhances hole mobility in C8-DNTT-C8 compared to DNTT.

    • Samuele Giannini
    • , Lucia Di Virgilio
    •  & David Beljonne

  • News & Views |

    Amorphization can be an additional mechanism to assist plastic deformation in crystalline materials, providing a strategy to improve the load-bearing ability of brittle materials.

    • Shiteng Zhao
    •  & Xiaolei Wu

  • Perspective |

    This Perspective provides an overview on the emergent field of colloidal robotics, discussing recent developments on colloidal and micrometre-sized particles that can perform functions such as sensing, communication, computation and motion.

    • Albert Tianxiang Liu
    • , Marek Hempel
    •  & Michael S. Strano

  • Article |

    Nanoparticle retention inside tumours has been associated with lymphatic vessel collapse. It is now shown that nanoparticles exit from solid tumours through lymphatic vessels in or surrounding the tumour by a nanoparticle-size-dependent mechanism.

    • Luan N. M. Nguyen
    • , Zachary P. Lin
    •  & Warren C. W. Chan

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