Soft materials articles within Nature Materials

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  • News & Views |

    Quantitative atomic-scale images of electric potentials at surfaces have now been obtained with a non-contact atomic force microscope by functionalizing the tip as a quantum dot sensor.

    • Mats Persson

  • Article |

    Porous molecular crystals are easy to fabricate but thought to have limited stability as they are bound by non-covalent interactions. Here, a porous crystal composed of C60 and phthalocyanine is demonstrated with stability to heat, acid, base and high pressures.

    • C. Grazia Bezzu
    • , Luke A. Burt
    •  & Neil B. McKeown

  • News & Views |

    Organic donor–acceptor heterojunctions can show efficient electroluminescence and at the same time generate charges under photovoltaic operation.

    • Wolfgang Brütting

  • News & Views |

    A single dopant molecule can exchange more than one charge with the hosting polymer semiconductor, doubling the maximum doping efficiency achievable.

    • Björn Lüssem

  • Article |

    A monomer molecular dopant with high electron affinity is shown to accept up to two electrons from conjugated polymers with low ionization efficiency and then generate free charge carriers with an efficiency of up to 170%.

    • David Kiefer
    • , Renee Kroon
    •  & Christian Müller

  • Article |

    Organic radical polymers are currently being considered as active materials for fast-charging battery electrodes but their transport and charge storage characteristics are not well understood. A quantitative view of in situ ion transport and doping in these systems during the redox process is now provided.

    • Shaoyang Wang
    • , Fei Li
    •  & Jodie L. Lutkenhaus

  • News & Views |

    An elastomer sheet with programmed inner channel architecture swiftly shapes into a desired three-dimensional geometry upon the application of pressure.

    • Efi Efrati

  • Letter |

    Elastomer sheets with programmable air channel organization swiftly shape into complex three-dimensional structures upon the application of pressure.

    • Emmanuel Siéfert
    • , Etienne Reyssat
    •  & Benoît Roman

  • Article |

    Liquid repellent coatings are important for several applications. Now, a coating that repels ultralow surface tension liquids and simultaneously shows robustness and transparency is reported.

    • Shuaijun Pan
    • , Rui Guo
    •  & Frank Caruso

  • Letter |

    Dense suspensions of hard particles readily display discontinuous shear thickening under shear but not reversible shear jamming. Here it is shown that the formation of interparticle hydrogen bonds is crucial for the shear jamming of these suspensions.

    • Nicole M. James
    • , Endao Han
    •  & Heinrich M. Jaeger

  • Article |

    Ultrafast water transport in the surface of Sarracenia trichome is reported and demonstrated in synthetic bioinspired materials, where nano- and microchannels induce high-speed sliding of droplets on top of a thin water film.

    • Huawei Chen
    • , Tong Ran
    •  & Lei Jiang

  • News & Views |

    A quantitative description of sound wave propagation in suspensions of self-propelled colloidal particles is achieved by combining microfluidics, video microscopy and theory.

    • Jörn Dunkel

  • News & Views |

    Monatomic glassy antimony can now be achieved via melt-quenching in a nanoconfined volume in a device setting. In contrast to alloys currently used in phase-change memories, deviation from optimized composition is no longer an issue in this simple material.

    • Wei Zhang
    •  & Evan Ma

  • Letter |

    By using stacked macrocycle dimers, a 2D nanosheet self-assembles that exclusively captures a single enantiomer, and can release it by external stimulus via salt addition.

    • Bo Sun
    • , Yongju Kim
    •  & Myongsoo Lee

  • Letter |

    Active rotational motion of pre-strained materials is achieved by elastic deformations that break rotational symmetry around their axes.

    • Arthur Baumann
    • , Antoni Sánchez-Ferrer
    •  & Igor M. Kulić

  • Article |

    Quantitative analysis of polymer LED degradation under current stress provides insight on the role of hole traps and their formation. Blending of the emitting material with large-bandgap semiconductors leads to trap dilution and improved stability.

    • Quan Niu
    • , Roland Rohloff
    •  & N. Irina Crăciun

  • News & Views |

    A combination of hard, soft and nanoscale organic components results in robust superhydrophobic surfaces that can withstand mechanical abrasion and chemical oxidation, and exhibit excellent substrate adhesion.

    • Henri-Louis Girard
    • , Sami Khan
    •  & Kripa K. Varanasi

  • News & Views |

    The chirality of colloids dispersed in achiral liquid crystals shapes colloidal dynamics and interactions, giving rise to chiral supramolecular assemblies and attractive or repulsive colloidal motions.

    • Karthik Nayani
    • , Young-Ki Kim
    •  & Nicholas L. Abbott

  • Editorial |

    As the electronic performance of organic semiconductors and other emergent materials improves, researchers call for attention in extracting charge mobility values from field-effect transistors.

  • Article |

    Proceeding from quantum mechanical predictions, a high shear piezoelectric constant of 178 pm V−1 was measured for the amino acid crystal beta glycine. This originates from the efficient packing of the molecules of the amino acid.

    • Sarah Guerin
    • , Aimee Stapleton
    •  & Damien Thompson

  • Article |

    Colloidal chiral springs and helices are formed by light inside a nematic liquid crystal suspension, predefining the mesoscopic superstructures self-assembled in such systems.

    • Ye Yuan
    • , Angel Martinez
    •  & Ivan I. Smalyukh

  • News & Views |

    In contrast with protocols reporting self-assembly of nanocrystals after synthesis, Pd nanocrystals rapidly form 3D micrometre-size superlattices during growth. The nanocrystals keep growing after assembly, tuning the size of the lattice.

    • Kun Liu
    •  & Eugenia Kumacheva

  • Letter |

    A two-dimensional quasicrystalline tiling based on the bronze-mean hexagonal pattern is proposed.

    • Tomonari Dotera
    • , Shinichi Bekku
    •  & Primož Ziherl

  • News & Views |

    Nanostructured films of organic semiconductors are now shown to enhance the Raman signal of probe molecules, paving the way to the realization of substrates for Raman spectroscopy with molecular selectivity.

    • John R. Lombardi

  • News & Views |

    Sound waves drive the organization of particle scatterers into stable structures, exhibiting phononic band gaps that heal from disturbances and adapt to changes in the drive.

    • Kyle J. M. Bishop

  • Article |

    Viscoelastic phase separation of colloidal suspensions can be interrupted to form gels either by glass transition or crystallization. A kinetic pathway to spontaneously form network or porous structures made of metallic and semiconducting crystals is proposed.

    • Hideyo Tsurusawa
    • , John Russo
    •  & Hajime Tanaka

  • Article |

    DNA origami allows the design of rod-shaped particles with specific geometrical features. This is exploited to examine how particle-level characteristics affect properties of the bulk phase and the superstructures such colloids assemble into.

    • Mahsa Siavashpouri
    • , Christian H. Wachauf
    •  & Zvonimir Dogic

  • News & Views |

    The magnetization in a chiral ferromagnetic fluid can be twisted and linked to form a stable three-dimensional topological soliton known as a hopfion.

    • Paul Sutcliffe

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