Soft materials articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Proton conduction is one of the interesting applications of hydrogen-bonded organic frameworks. Here, the authors report hydrogen-bonded organic framework that can be transformed into glassy state, effectively mitigating grain boundary effects, and significantly enhancing proton conduction performance.

    • Feng-Fan Yang
    • , Xiao-Lu Wang
    •  & Linfeng Liang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Supramolecular polymer networks have unique and useful properties due to the reversible nature of their cross-links. Here, the authors show that when two distinct supramolecular interaction classes exist within a single cross-link, new functions can result.

    • David J. Lundberg
    • , Christopher M. Brown
    •  & Jeremiah A. Johnson

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Here, the authors show a facile and sustainable 3D printing by utilizing a reversible salting-out effect on poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) (PNIPAM) solutions. Aqueous salt solutions lower the phase transition temperature of PNIPAM solutions below 10 °C and instantly solidify the PNIPAM solutions upon contact.

    • Donghwan Ji
    • , Joseph Liu
    •  & Jinhye Bae

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Strategies to produce supramolecular glass and the study of its intrinsic structure and mechanical properties remains largely unexplored. Here, the authors prepare a supramolecular glass via the host–guest recognition between methyl-β-cyclodextrin and para-hydroxybenzoic acid with recyclability, compatibility, and thermal processability.

    • Changyong Cai
    • , Shuanggen Wu
    •  & Shengyi Dong

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Here the authors identify a generic coupling in phase-separated liquids between motility and phase equilibria perturbations: phase-separated droplets swim to their dissolution. This suggests alternative transport mechanism for biomolecular condensates.

    • Etienne Jambon-Puillet
    • , Andrea Testa
    •  & Eric R. Dufresne

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Dual wavelength vat photopolymerization has emerged as a powerful approach to create multimaterial objects but require changing the resin during the printing process. Here, the authors develop a method of dual-wavelength 3D printing that can directly access multicolor parts without requiring changing of resin feedstocks or introduction of new materials during the printing process.

    • Kyle C. H. Chin
    • , Grant Ovsepyan
    •  & Andrew J. Boydston

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The synthesis of covalent organic frameworks (COFs) by a soft-template methodology is challenging. Here, the authors attach the soft templates to the COFs backbone via ion bonds, avoiding crystallization incompatibilities and allowing subsequent removal of the template by ion exchange for enhanced U(VI)/Th(IV) adsorption performance.

    • Ningning He
    • , Yingdi Zou
    •  & Lijian Ma

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The inherent instability of poly(sulfur) renders the conversion of elementary sulfur into sulfur-rich polymers challenging which limits the use of this industrial by-product. Here, the authors demonstrate that inorganic sulfur can be utilized by copolymerizing with cyclic disulfides, producing high-performance thermoplastic elastomers with self-healing ability and degradability.

    • Yuanxin Deng
    • , Zhengtie Huang
    •  & Da-Hui Qu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Despite the use of amine-functionalized polymers as metal adsorbents, they are generally ineffective at recovering precious metals. Here the authors prepare a star-shaped, hydrazide-functionalized polymer as a recoverable standalone adsorbent with high precious metal adsorption capability/selectivity and practical feasibility.

    • Seung Su Shin
    • , Youngkyun Jung
    •  & Jung-Hyun Lee

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Granular materials exhibit yielding behaviors rather different from glasses that can be elastic. Here, Yuan et al. show a cross-over from creep to diffusive dynamics in three-dimensional granular systems under cyclic shear and that the relaxation process depends on the roughness of the constituent particles.

    • Ye Yuan
    • , Zhikun Zeng
    •  & Yujie Wang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The efficient encapsulation of guests by coordination cages in the solid state is prevented by their flexibility, dynamicity, and metal-ligand bond reversibility. Here, the authors report coordination cages integrated into poly(ionic liquid)s to control swelling and mechanical properties of the gels and develop efficient and regenerable supramolecular separation materials.

    • Xiang Zhang
    • , Dawei Zhang
    •  & Mingyuan He

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Photochromic materials suffer from degradation when exposed to harsh chemical environments, but this can be overcome by providing chemical shielding via superomniphobicity. Here, the authors show the design rationale and careful materials selection for fabrication of color morphing surfaces that can simultaneously display excellent chemical resistance.

    • Adil Majeed Rather
    • , Sravanthi Vallabhuneni
    •  & Arun Kumar Kota

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Plastic pollution severely threatens the resilience of nature. Here, the authors utilize the spore-forming, polymer-degrading bacteria, Bacillus subtilis, as a living filler to develop biocomposite thermoplastic polyurethane with improved mechanical properties and biodegradation.

    • Han Sol Kim
    • , Myung Hyun Noh
    •  & Jonathan K. Pokorski

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The design of synthetic systems that can sense chemical gradients and respond with directional motility and chemical activity is of interest. Here, the authors realize and control such behaviors in a synthetic system by tailoring multivalent interactions of adenosine nucleotides with catalytic microbeads.

    • Ekta Shandilya
    • , Bhargav Rallabandi
    •  & Subhabrata Maiti

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The quantitative connection between the molecular topology and molecular dynamics is a long-standing, fundamental challenge in polymer science. Here the authors present a model-driven predictive scheme for the uniaxial extensional viscosity and strain hardening of branched polymer melts, specifically for the pom-pom architecture.

    • Max G. Schußmann
    • , Manfred Wilhelm
    •  & Valerian Hirschberg

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Tuning the physical interactions and structures to govern the viscoelastic properties in hydrogels without altering the chemistry is challenging. Here the authors design a complexation gel composite and utilize the physical principle of topologically frustrated dynamical state to tune the correlated structures between the guest polycation chains and negatively charged host gels.

    • Gui Kang Wang
    • , Yi Ming Yang
    •  & Di Jia

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Soft elastic materials could be useful in the fabrication of brain-machine interfaces, but achieving the desirable material properties can be challenging. Here, the authors report control of the amorphous-crystalline transition of polymers to alter hydrogel properties and monitor mouse behaviour.

    • Sizhe Huang
    • , Xinyue Liu
    •  & Siyuan Rao

  • Review Article
    | Open Access

    Untethered soft robots offer numerous advantages in terms of mobility, versatility, and autonomy, making them increasingly valuable for a wide range of applications. Jung et al. review the new types of untethered soft actuators that represent breakthroughs and discuss the future perspective of soft actuators.

    • Yeongju Jung
    • , Kangkyu Kwon
    •  & Seung Hwan Ko

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Perception plays a pivotal role in advancing future intelligent textiles. Here, the authors develop smart perceptual textiles using natural-derived ionic-conductive silk fibers. These textiles can electrically detect external hazards and precisely pinpointing human touch, making them suitable for smart protective clothing and soft human-machine interfaces.

    • Haojie Lu
    • , Yong Zhang
    •  & Yingying Zhang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    It is useful to be able to equip marine animals with sensors, but it can be challenging to attach these to soft marine organisms. Here, the authors use an adhesive hydrogel to achieve rapid attachment of sensors to marine life including jellyfish, squid and lobster.

    • Camilo Duque Londono
    • , Seth F. Cones
    •  & Xuanhe Zhao

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Photo-crosslinking polymerization facilitates precise control of hydrogel formation for various applications including tissue engineering, but most existing photo-crosslinking methods fail to achieve deep-tissue penetration, especially within bone structures. Here the authors report a strategy of low-dose X-ray-activated polymerization that enables deep-tissue hydrogel formation.

    • Hailei Zhang
    • , Boyan Tang
    •  & Gang Han

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Inertial active matter can self-organize into coexisting phases that feature different temperatures, but experimental realizations are limited. Here, the authors report the coexistence of hot liquid and cold gas states in mixtures of overdamped active and inertial passive Brownian particles, giving a broader relevance.

    • Lukas Hecht
    • , Iris Dong
    •  & Benno Liebchen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Polyamide-12 is the main polymer employed to produce 3D objects by laser sintering constraining the functionality of the items produced. Here, the authors report a clean and scalable approach for the functionalization of polyamide-12 particles, yielding materials that can be printed using commercial apparatus.

    • Eduards Krumins
    • , Liam A. Crawford
    •  & Steven M. Howdle

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Selective nanofiltration membranes with accurate molecular sieving offer a solution to recover rare metals and other valuable elements from brines but this demands the development of membranes with precise sub-nanometer pores surpassing those available today. Here, the authors report a scalable approach for membrane fabrication in which functionalized macrocycles are seamlessly oriented via supramolecular interactions during the interfacial polycondensation on a polyacrylonitrile support layer.

    • Shanshan Hong
    • , Maria Di Vincenzo
    •  & Suzana P. Nunes

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Collective behavior of nonlinear soft valves forming fluid flow networks is not well understood. The authors reveal the mechanisms underlying the collective behavior of soft flow networks with negative differential resistance elements.

    • Alejandro Martínez-Calvo
    • , Matthew D. Biviano
    •  & Miguel Ruiz-García

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Supramolecular polymeric materials have exhibited attractive features such as self-healing, reversibility and stimuli-responsiveness but because of the weak bonding nature of most noncovalent interactions, constructing supramolecular polymer materials with high robustness remains challenging. Here, the authors describe the construction of highly robust stimuli-responsive supramolecular polymer networks by using only a tiny amount of metallacycles as the supramolecular crosslinkers.

    • Lang He
    • , Yu Jiang
    •  & Shijun Li

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The extrusion-based three-dimensional printing of polymers, metals, and composites requires elevated temperatures and may lead to diverse undesirable defects on printed parts. Here, the authors develop a vapor-induced phase separation printing technique to construct polymeric, metallic, and composite parts by using a polymer as a binder.

    • Marc Sole-Gras
    • , Bing Ren
    •  & Yong Huang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The construction of three-dimensional covalent organic frameworks for gas separation is challenging due to the similar physicochemical properties of the gas mixture. Here, the authors report functional three-dimensional covalent organic frameworks by fine-tunning the pore environment with pyridine units to achieve effective separation of ethane from ethylene.

    • Yang Xie
    • , Wenjing Wang
    •  & Cheng Wang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Sulfur-rich polymers are promising candidates for chemical recycling but lack efficient synthetic strategies for achieving diverse structures. Here, the authors report a synthesis strategy for polytrithiocarbonates which is compatible with a wide range of monomers enabling diverse structures via polycondensation of dithiols and dimethyl trithiocarbonate.

    • Jin-Zhuo Zhao
    • , Tian-Jun Yue
    •  & Wei-Min Ren

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Assembly of block copolymers can be controlled to give varying morphologies and functionalities, but there are still aspects of the process that are not well understood. Here, the authors report convoluted self-assembly behaviours of block copolymers with discotic liquid crystalline moieties.

    • Huanzhi Yang
    • , Yunjun Luo
    •  & Xiaoyu Li

  • Article
    | Open Access

    It is challenging to achieve multicolor long-lived room temperature phosphorescence in intrinsic polymers, especially for white afterglow. Here, the authors report a strategy to obtain pure white afterglow micro-crosslinked polymers by covalently coupling different conjugated chromophores with precursors through a simple and rapid one-pot reaction.

    • Qingao Chen
    • , Lunjun Qu
    •  & Chaolong Yang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Carbaporphyrin dimers, known for their interesting photophysical properties and application in metal-organic chemistry, generally contain two identical subunits. Here, the authors highlight the benefits that can accrue from breaking the inherent symmetry of carbaporphyrin dimers and details a new approach to creating heterobimetallic complexes.

    • Haodan He
    • , Jiyeon Lee
    •  & Xian-Sheng Ke

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Many mechanical computation platforms developed till date lack a rational design strategy and have limited computational functions, such as stand-alone single logic gates, or deformation/transition behaviors. Byun at al. have reported a systematic design principle for integrated mechanical computing that enables the electronics-free design of autonomous and intelligent soft machines, which are seamlessly integrated.

    • Junghwan Byun
    • , Aniket Pal
    •  & Metin Sitti

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