Soft materials articles within Nature Materials

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  • News & Views |

    In the absence of biochemical gradients, cancer cell migration over fibrillar isotropic collagen can occur by a mechanical self-steering process involving asymmetric matrix deformation from the rear.

    • Katarina Wolf
    •  & Peter Friedl

  • Letter |

    Reconstituted cytoskeleton networks linked with catch bonds display increased mechanical strength and crack resistance than those containing slip bonds, and simultaneously being more deformable, which allows for better adaptability to new mechanical environments.

    • Yuval Mulla
    • , Mario J. Avellaneda
    •  & Gijsje H. Koenderink

  • Comment |

    Soft matter has evolved considerably since it became recognized as a unified field. This has been driven by new experimental, numerical and theoretical methods to probe soft matter, and by new ways of formulating soft materials. These advances have driven a revolution in knowledge and expansion into biological and active matter.

    • David A. Weitz

  • News & Views |

    Periodic nanostructures create brilliant colours, termed structural colouration, through light scattering and refraction. Now, using a simple and scalable method, stress- and strain-induced dynamic colour shifts are realized in stretchable polymers.

    • Daeyeon Won
    •  & Seung Hwan Ko

  • Comment |

    Twentieth-century utopian visions of a space-age future have been eclipsed by dystopian fears of climate change and environmental degradation. Avoiding such grim forecasts depends on materials innovation and our ability to predict and plan not only their behaviour but also their sustainable manufacture, use and recyclability.

    • Philip Ball

  • Article |

    Knowledge of band structure aids in understanding charge transport behaviour, yet it has proved impossible to measure the conduction (LUMO) band of organic semiconductors, in particular due to sample degradation by the electron beam. To address this, the authors developed and used AR-LEIPS to reveal the LUMO band dispersion of pentacene.

    • Haruki Sato
    • , Syed A. Abd. Rahman
    •  & Hiroyuki Yoshida

  • News & Views |

    Lipid nanodiscs carrying a potent STING agonist penetrate deep into solid tumours compared with gold-standard liposomes and enable long-term antitumour immunotherapy.

    • Ningqiang Gong
    •  & Michael J. Mitchell

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Here the authors investigate lipid nanodiscs as drug carriers for antitumour immunotherapy. They demonstrate that flexible lipid nanodiscs functionalized with STING-activating cyclic dinucleotides exhibit superior tumour penetration and tumour cell uptake compared with spherical liposomes, resulting in improved antitumour T-cell priming and tumour regression.

    • Eric L. Dane
    • , Alexis Belessiotis-Richards
    •  & Darrell J. Irvine

  • News & Views |

    A simple one-step method that enables the random copolymerization of two monomers with different solubility in ionic liquids creates phase-separated elastic and stiff domains that result in ultra-tough and stretchable ionogels.

    • Gi Doo Cha
    •  & Dae-Hyeong Kim

  • Article |

    Two monomers with distinct solubility of their corresponding polymers in an ionic liquid enable tuning of the microstructure of the copolymers during their polymerization. Thus, energy dissipative and elastic molecular domains are created, resulting in highly tough and stretchable ionogels.

    • Meixiang Wang
    • , Pengyao Zhang
    •  & Michael D. Dickey

  • Perspective |

    Molecular weaving is the entanglement of one-dimensional flexible molecules into higher-dimensional networks. This Perspective provides an overview of the progress so far, and discusses the future challenges and potentials of this field.

    • Zhi-Hui Zhang
    • , Björn J. Andreassen
    •  & Liang Zhang

  • Article |

    The liquid nature of hard glasses is demonstrated by broadband stress relaxation experiments. The rheology and dynamic transition of various glass systems can be unified by a universal scaling law in the time–stress–temperature–volume domain.

    • Shuangxi Song
    • , Fan Zhu
    •  & Mingwei Chen

  • Article |

    Symmetry breaking in colloidal crystals is achieved with DNA-grafted programmable atom equivalents and complementary electron equivalents, whose interactions are tuned to create anisotropic crystalline precursors with well-defined coordination geometries that assemble into distinct low-symmetry crystals.

    • Shunzhi Wang
    • , Sangmin Lee
    •  & Chad A. Mirkin

  • News & Views |

    Slow, tunable dissociation of non-covalent host–guest complexes confers supramolecular polymer networks with excellent compressive strength and self-recovery.

    • Matthew J. Webber

  • News & Views |

    A synthetic matrix recapitulates fundamental biological interactions of pancreatic cancer to facilitate the culture of mouse and human pancreatic organoids.

    • Sohini Khan
    •  & Hervé Tiriac

  • Editorial |

    Innovations in soft materials design and engineering are delivering promising functional components for advanced soft robotic applications.

  • News & Views |

    Coupled liquid-crystalline network oscillators incorporating light-responsive molecules show synchronized motion when stimulated by light. This behaviour resembles that of synchronized clock pendulums and may find uses in advanced soft robotics applications.

    • Yanlei Yu

  • Comment |

    New classes of functional soft materials show promise to revolutionize robotics. Now materials scientists must focus on realizing the predicted performance of these materials and developing effective and robust interfaces to integrate them into highly functional robotic systems that have a positive impact on human life.

    • Philipp Rothemund
    • , Yoonho Kim
    •  & Christoph Keplinger

  • Article |

    The large-scale fabrication of cellulose nanocrystal photonic films in a roll-to-roll device is achieved by careful optimization of the cellulose nanocrystal formulation and its controlled deposition and drying on a substrate. Once dry, these photonic films can be peeled and milled into effect pigments, highlighting the potential of cellulose nanocrystals as a sustainable material for industrial photonic applications.

    • Benjamin E. Droguet
    • , Hsin-Ling Liang
    •  & Silvia Vignolini

  • News & Views |

    A functional bioadhesive has been developed to possess properties such as mechanical compliance, electrical conductivity and optical transparency, and is utilized for bonding electronic devices to various organs in the body for up to several months.

    • Tsuyoshi Sekitani

  • Article |

    The solvent-free conversion of phthalonitrile derivatives into phthalocyanines in the bulk is described, involving a reductive cyclotetramerization step and the formation of one-dimensional single-crystalline fibres. This solvent-free autocatalytic supramolecular polymerization may enable for a sustainable fabrication of multi-block supramolecular copolymers.

    • Zhen Chen
    • , Yukinaga Suzuki
    •  & Takuzo Aida

  • Article |

    Micromagnets dispersed in a polymer matrix are used to realize a soft magnetoelastic generator with high magnetomechanical coupling factor, used for wearable and implantable power generation and sensing applications.

    • Yihao Zhou
    • , Xun Zhao
    •  & Jun Chen

  • Article |

    A two-dimensional hole gas with high carrier density is confined at the interface between a solution-processed, single-crystalline organic semiconducting film and the electric double layer formed by an ion gel on top of the film.

    • Naotaka Kasuya
    • , Junto Tsurumi
    •  & Jun Takeya

  • News & Views |

    Light-activated protein actuators composed of bioengineered motors and molecular scaffolds achieve millimetre-scale mechanical work, which holds promise for microrobotics applications.

    • Henry Hess

  • Article |

    Programmable triangular DNA blocks self-assemble into distinct icosahedral shells with specific geometry and apertures that can encapsulate viruses and decrease viral infection.

    • Christian Sigl
    • , Elena M. Willner
    •  & Hendrik Dietz

  • Article |

    Charged colloidal systems undergo fast crystallization under deep supercooling due to a coupled mechanism involving the discrete advancement of the crystal growth front and defect repair inside the recently formed solid phase.

    • Qiong Gao
    • , Jingdong Ai
    •  & Peng Tan

  • Article |

    Stacked elastomeric arrays containing plasmonic nanoparticles show efficient chiral responses that can be fully controlled by mechanical compression and stack rotation. These simple layered materials may be useful modulators for photonic applications.

    • Patrick T. Probst
    • , Martin Mayer
    •  & Andreas Fery

  • Perspective |

    Highly ordered crystalline porous solids are useful for many applications. This Perspective explores the evolution of these systems from the ordered state to the glassy and liquid states, discusses the different types of porous liquid and considers possible applications of these disordered systems.

    • Thomas D. Bennett
    • , François-Xavier Coudert
    •  & Andrew I. Cooper

  • News & Views |

    Nanoporous tripeptide crystals mechanically deform upon water evaporation due to the strengthening of the water hydrogen bonding inside the pores, which causes the distortion of the surrounding supramolecular network, creating stresses that extend through the crystal lattice and result in actuation.

    • Panče Naumov

  • News & Views |

    Liquid-metal networks have been developed that can be stretched to extreme deformations with minimal change in electrical resistance, ushering in approaches for breathable and integrated soft and stretchable electronic devices.

    • Michael D. Bartlett

  • Article |

    Conductors made of a mixture of liquid and solid domains of Ga–In alloy can be stretched over 1,000%, keeping almost constant conductivity, and used to connect commercial electronic components and realize stretchable multilayer printed circuit boards.

    • Shanliangzi Liu
    • , Dylan S. Shah
    •  & Rebecca Kramer-Bottiglio

  • Article |

    Upon light stimulation, two jointed liquid crystalline network oscillators affect the movement of each other, achieving synchronized in-phase and anti-phase oscillations that can be explored to generate soft actuators with collective responses.

    • Ghislaine Vantomme
    • , Lars C. M. Elands
    •  & Dirk J. Broer

  • Article |

    Elastomers swollen with solvent repeatedly snap back and forward as the solvent evaporates, which is harnessed to fabricate polymeric devices that jump autonomously.

    • Yongjin Kim
    • , Jay van den Berg
    •  & Alfred J. Crosby

  • Article |

    Hierarchically structured 3D materials made of distinct colloidal particles spontaneously assemble by combining the electrostatic modulation of particle interactions to form supracolloids that are organized into 3D structures on solvent drying in an entropy-driven process.

    • Mohammad-Amin Moradi
    • , E. Deniz Eren
    •  & Joseph P. Patterson

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