Soft materials articles within Nature Materials

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  • Letter |

    Highly monodisperse silver polyhedral nanocrystals passivated with polymers are shown to behave as quasi-hard particles that self-assemble by sedimentation into millimetre-sized supercrystals, which correspond to the particles' three-dimensional densest packings. Monte Carlo simulations confirm the observed self-assembled structures, including an exotic structure for octahedra that is stabilized by depletion forces induced by an excess of polymer in solution.

    • Joel Henzie
    • , Michael Grünwald
    •  & Peidong Yang

  • News & Views |

    Surfaces are known to act as catalysts for the nucleation of crystals. Using polymer films patterned with nanopores, it is now shown that the shape of the pores can control the kinetics of surface-induced crystal nucleation.

    • Richard P. Sear

  • Letter |

    It is shown that an elastic film on a viscoelastic substrate under biaxial compressive stress forms a hierarchical network of folds generated by repetitive wrinkle-to-fold transitions. The morphology of the hierarchical patterns can be controlled by modifying the geometry and boundary conditions of the membrane.

    • Pilnam Kim
    • , Manouk Abkarian
    •  & Howard A. Stone

  • Letter |

    Conjugated polymers are applied widely in organic optoelectronic devices. The performance of these devices depends critically on polymer morphology, which can be modified by solvent vapour annealing. This process has now been controlled on mesoscopic length scales, bridging the gap between single-molecule and bulk studies, and revealing long-range energy transport in ordered polymer aggregates.

    • Jan Vogelsang
    • , Takuji Adachi
    •  & Paul F. Barbara

  • Letter |

    Toothpaste, mayonnaise and other systems are soft particle glasses. In these, the soft particles are jammed so that the glasses behave like weak solids at rest but at sufficient stress flow like liquids. This has made their theoretical understanding difficult. A new micromechanical model is now able to predict the rheology of these soft particle glasses.

    • Jyoti R. Seth
    • , Lavanya Mohan
    •  & Roger T. Bonnecaze

  • Letter |

    Monodisperse octapod-shaped inorganic nanocrystals suspended in suitable solvents are shown to self-assemble into chains of interlocked octapods, which in turn aggregate to form three-dimensional crystals. Such hierarchical self-assembly is supported by a simulation model of the octapods, which shows that the favourable interlocked configuration is encoded in the octapod’s shape.

    • Karol Miszta
    • , Joost de Graaf
    •  & Liberato Manna

  • News & Views |

    Mimicking the complexity of the extracellular environment in synthetic hydrogels is hard. A simple two-photon excitation strategy to simultaneously immobilize multiple proteins with spatial control in three dimensions shows promise.

    • Jennifer L. West

  • Letter |

    The use of flexible polymer substrates not only reduces weight and fabrication costs of solar cells, but their bendability also enables new applications. A careful design of Cu(In,Ga)Se2 solar cells grown on polymer substrates now solves earlier fabrication issues, leading to conversion efficiencies matching those grown on rigid substrates.

    • Adrian Chirilă
    • , Stephan Buecheler
    •  & Ayodhya N. Tiwari

  • Article |

    Methodologies capable of directly visualizing and detecting gases are important for a wide variety of applications that involve instantaneous decision-making in complex environments and locations. A strategy for the capture and detection of gases by co-operative structural transformations of a flexible porous coordination polymer and fluorescent reporter molecules is now reported.

    • Nobuhiro Yanai
    • , Koji Kitayama
    •  & Susumu Kitagawa

  • Article |

    Biominerals exhibit properties, morphologies and hierarchical ordering that invariably surpass those of their synthetic counterparts. Artificial biominerals consisting of calcite crystals incorporating copolymer micelles have now been produced. The synthetic crystals show analogous texture and defect structures to biogenic calcite crystals and are harder than pure calcite.

    • Yi-Yeoun Kim
    • , Kathirvel Ganesan
    •  & Fiona C. Meldrum

  • Article |

    Bioactive proteins within hydrogel scaffolds used to culture cells can guide cellular activities, but the control of the location of the proteins has proved difficult. Using the multiphoton laser of a confocal microscope, simultaneous patterning of two growth factors, which remain bioactive after immobilization, is now shown in three-dimensional hydrogels. The technique should be applicable to the patterning of a variety of proteins.

    • Ryan G. Wylie
    • , Shoeb Ahsan
    •  & Molly S. Shoichet

  • Letter |

    A suspension of magnetic colloidal particles confined at a liquid–liquid interface and energized by an external periodic magnetic field self-assembles into star-shaped structures that can be magnetically manipulated to capture and transport smaller non-magnetic particles.

    • Alexey Snezhko
    •  & Igor S. Aranson

  • Letter |

    Superparamagnetic nanoparticles under an external magnetic field align in the field’s direction to minimize magnetic-dipole interactions. By modulating and fixing the alignment of magnetic nanoparticles in polymeric microcomponents through photopolymerization, magnetic nanocomposite microactuators were programmed to undergo complex motion, such as anisotropic bending and crawling.

    • Jiyun Kim
    • , Su Eun Chung
    •  & Sunghoon Kwon

  • Article |

    Colloidal suspensions often contain mixtures of particles that must be sorted by size or density, but the sediment structure resulting from polydisperse particles settling rapidly remains unclear. Bidisperse colloids with soft-sphere interactions are now shown to spontaneously arrange into two macroscopic layers after sedimentation.

    • César González Serrano
    • , Joseph J. McDermott
    •  & Darrell Velegol

  • News & Views |

    Stretching polymer electrolyte membranes increases water diffusion along the stretched direction. It is now shown that the enhancement in transport is a result of the alignment of domains of hydrophilic channels, and that transport anisotropy and alignment are linearly coupled.

    • Edward T. Samulski

  • Letter |

    Polymer electrolyte membranes selectively transport ions and polar molecules, and are of interest for applications such as polymeric batteries, fuel cells, mechanical actuators and water purification. Transport anisotropy is now shown to linearly depend on the degree of alignment, indicating that membrane stretching only causes domain reorientation without affecting channel dimensions or defect structure.

    • Jing Li
    • , Jong Keun Park
    •  & Louis A. Madsen

  • News & Views |

    Maximum yield of self-assembly for a target structure can be attained with simple rules for the interactions between the structure's building blocks.

    • Daan Frenkel
    •  & David J. Wales

  • News & Views |

    Efficient energy harvesting from temperature gradients requires thermoelectric materials with low thermal and high electrical conductivities. A conducting polymer can fulfil these conditions if its doping level is controlled precisely.

    • Mario Leclerc
    •  & Ahmed Najari

  • Article |

    The energy-level alignment at the heterojunction critically influences the performance of organic photovoltaic devices. It is now shown that the surface dipole moments of individual organic semiconductor films can be tuned with surface-segregated monolayers before forming bilayer solar cells by a simple film-transfer method.

    • Akira Tada
    • , Yanfang Geng
    •  & Keisuke Tajima

  • Commentary |

    Research on superhydrophobic materials has mostly focused on their extreme non-wettability. However, the implications of superhydrophobicity beyond wetting, in particular for transport phenomena, remain largely unexplored.

    • Lydéric Bocquet
    •  & Eric Lauga

  • Article |

    Nanofibrous hollow microspheres, formed by the self-assembly of star-shaped biodegradable polymers, are shown to be effective injectable cell carriers for cartilage repair. The microspheres accommodate cells and enhance cartilage regeneration in vivo with respect to various control groups, in particular, indicating smooth integration between the regenerated and host tissue.

    • Xiaohua Liu
    • , Xiaobing Jin
    •  & Peter X. Ma

  • Letter |

    The controlled formation of micrometre-size drops is of importance for many technological applications such as microfluidics. A wetting-based destabilization mechanism of forced microfilaments on either hydrophilic or hydrophobic stripes leading to the periodic emission of droplets can now be used to control independently the drop size and emission period.

    • R. Ledesma-Aguilar
    • , R. Nistal
    •  & I. Pagonabarraga

  • Letter |

    Microporous organic polymers (MOPs) are technologically important for low-dielectric materials, gas separation and gas-storage applications. A class of amorphous MOPs prepared by cycloaddition modification is shown to exhibit outstanding CO2 separation performance and super-permeable characteristics

    • Naiying Du
    • , Ho Bum Park
    •  & Michael D. Guiver

  • News & Views |

    Embedding magnesium nanoparticles in a gas-selective polymer prevents their oxidation under ambient conditions while enabling reversible hydrogen storage.

    • Petra E. de Jongh

  • News & Views |

    Memory effects resulting from frustration and topology in nematic liquid crystals confined in bicontinuous structures may enable the fabrication of geometrically functionalized materials.

    • Igor Muševič
    •  & Slobodan Žumer

  • Article |

    Computer simulations of nematic liquid crystals confined in bicontinuous porous geometries show that frustration and topology lead to multiple, metastable trajectories of defect lines that can be memorized on application of external fields. These topologically enabled metastable states could be exploited to optically functionalize orientationally ordered materials.

    • Takeaki Araki
    • , Marco Buscaglia
    •  & Hajime Tanaka

  • News & Views |

    The realization of a self-assembled kagome lattice from colloids with attractive hydrophobic patches offers a simple but powerful example of the bottom-up design strategy.

    • Flavio Romano
    •  & Francesco Sciortino

  • Review Article |

    The presence of metal centres in synthetic polymers can impart interesting functionality on the resultant material. This Review Article focuses on the use of metal-containing polymers in a diverse range of applications, for example, in emissive and optical materials, in nanomaterials, as sensors, stimuli-responsive gels, catalysts and artifical metalloenzymes.

    • George R. Whittell
    • , Martin D. Hager
    •  & Ian Manners

  • Article |

    Monte Carlo simulations are performed to study the assembly of polyhedrons into various mesophases and crystalline states. The formation of new liquid-crystalline and plastic-crystalline phases is predicted at intermediate volume fractions and, by correlating these results with particle anisotropy and rotational symmetry, guidelines for predicting phase behaviour are proposed.

    • Umang Agarwal
    •  & Fernando A. Escobedo

  • Article |

    One of the key loss mechanisms in the operation of organic solar cells is the separation and extraction of the generated charge carriers from the active region. The use of a ferroelectric layer is now shown to create large internal electric fields, resulting in an enhanced carrier extraction and increased device efficiency.

    • Yongbo Yuan
    • , Timothy J. Reece
    •  & Jinsong Huang

  • News & Views |

    A knot-containing protein is found to fold reversibly at biologically relevant timescales despite not having naturally evolved for this ability.

    • Eugene Shakhnovich

  • News & Views |

    By combining gene cloning and amplification techniques, a new one-pot, parallel synthesis method for the generation of long, repetitive genes is realized. The method promises to open up the discovery of protein polymer biomaterials.

    • Sheng Ding
    • , Xiaoxiao Wang
    •  & Annelise E. Barron

  • Article |

    A one-pot, high-throughput method for the recombinant polymerization of monomer DNA sequences is reported. The method enables the rapid synthesis of diverse libraries of artificial repetitive polypeptides, exemplified by the isolation of protease-responsive polymers and a family of polypeptides with reversible thermally responsive behaviour.

    • Miriam Amiram
    • , Felipe Garcia Quiroz
    •  & Ashutosh Chilkoti

  • Article |

    Actin networks are an excellent model system for studying the mechanical properties of the cell cytoskeleton. Using microscopic methods, actin bundle networks formed in the presence of the crosslinking protein fascin show age-dependent changes in their viscoelastic properties and spontaneous relaxation dynamics in a similar way to glassy, soft materials.

    • O. Lieleg
    • , J. Kayser
    •  & A. R. Bausch

  • News & Views |

    Empty liquids and equilibrium gels have so far been only theoretical possibilities, predicted for colloids with patchy interactions. But evidence of both has now been found in Laponite, a widely studied clay.

    • Willem K. Kegel
    •  & Henk N. W. Lekkerkerker

  • News & Views |

    The first diffraction patterns from the individual atomic packing clusters in a metallic glass finally enable the direct study of local order in amorphous alloys.

    • Evan Ma
    •  & Ze Zhang

  • Review Article |

    In chemistry, some dynamic bonds can be selectively and reversibly broken and reformed in response to an environmental stimulus. This Review article discusses the incorporation of dynamic bonds, or interactions, in polymeric materials and the structural changes and macroscopic responses observed in the presence of different stimuli.

    • Rudy J. Wojtecki
    • , Michael A. Meador
    •  & Stuart J. Rowan

  • Article |

    A polymeric hydrogel coating shows impressive antimicrobial activity against both bacteria and fungi. The biocompatible and reusable coating, formed of a polycationic nanoporous hydrogel, is thought to act by drawing anionic sections of phospholipids on bacterial cell membranes into its pores, causing membrane disruption and cell death.

    • Peng Li
    • , Yin Fun Poon
    •  & Mary B. Chan-Park

  • Letter |

    Theoretical models of colloids with directional and anisotropic interactions have predicted the existence of both liquids with vanishing density, and arrested networks at equilibrium — that is, not undergoing phase separation. Experimental evidence of empty liquids and equilibrium gels is now provided for Laponite, a synthetic clay. These observations further our understanding of anisotropic interactions in colloidal suspensions.

    • Barbara Ruzicka
    • , Emanuela Zaccarelli
    •  & Francesco Sciortino

  • Letter |

    A one-step preparation method of electrospun, synthetic scaffolds with controlled surface chemistry and functionality is reported. On addition of amphiphilic macromolecules, non-specific protein adsorption on the fibres’ surfaces is reduced, and by the further covalent attachment of certain peptide sequences to the fibres, specific bioactivation of the scaffold is achieved.

    • Dirk Grafahrend
    • , Karl-Heinz Heffels
    •  & Jürgen Groll

  • Letter |

    Cathode degradation and methods for improving the selectivity of anode catalysts remain crucial challenges for the design of polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells. A chemically modified Pt electrode with a self-assembled monolayer of calix[4]arene molecules is now shown to selectively block the undesired oxygen reduction reaction.

    • Bostjan Genorio
    • , Dusan Strmcnik
    •  & Nenad M. Marković

  • News & Views |

    The DNA-mediated assembly of anisotropic gold nanoparticles shows the importance of particle shape in the controlled formation of DNA–nanoparticle superlattices.

    • Sharon C. Glotzer
    •  & Joshua A. Anderson

  • Letter |

    The formation of a NaTl lattice structure by DNA-mediated assembly of gold nanoparticles and virus-like protein nanoparticles is reported. The inorganic and organic components each form diamond-like frameworks that interpenetrate to give the NaTl lattice. These diamond-like structures are of interest for potential applications as photonic materials.

    • Petr Cigler
    • , Abigail K. R. Lytton-Jean
    •  & Sung Yong Park

  • Article |

    Hydrophobic surfaces composed of an asymmetric array of polymer nanorods show unidirectional wetting behaviour relative to the orientation of the tilted nanorods. The surfaces, which are smooth on the microscale, can transport water droplets of microlitre capacity by a ratcheting mechanism resulting from the pillared substrate.

    • Niranjan A. Malvadkar
    • , Matthew J. Hancock
    •  & Melik C. Demirel

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