Structural materials articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article |

    The scales of Arapaima gigas, a fresh water fish found in the Amazon Basin, act as effective armour against predators. Here, Zimmermann et al. elucidate the deformation mechanisms that allow for this resistance, concluding that lamellae in the scales reorient under an applied load, preventing fracture.

    • Elizabeth A. Zimmermann
    • , Bernd Gludovatz
    •  & Robert O. Ritchie

  • Article |

    The mechanical testing of thin films is non-trivial, due to their very fine dimensions. Kim et al. use the inherent surface tension of water as a platform for the frictionless tensile testing of gold films, with a thickness as fine as 55 nm.

    • Jae-Han Kim
    • , Adeel Nizami
    •  & Taek-Soo Kim

  • Article |

    Boron carbide is known to deform and fail via the formation of amorphous shear bands, but the atomic-scale events by which this occurs are unknown. Reddy et al.study the atomic structure of these shear bands and find that they form via the disassembly of icosahedra.

    • K. Madhav Reddy
    • , P. Liu
    •  & M.W. Chen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The use of spider silk in electronic devices is dependent on its compatibility with electrically conductive materials. Here the authors modify spider silk with carbon nanotubes to produce a strong, flexible and electrically conductive thread.

    • Eden Steven
    • , Wasan R. Saleh
    •  & James S. Brooks

  • Article |

    Monocrystalline diamond is the stiffest and hardest material known to man. Here, the authors reveal that polycrystalline diamond synthesized by a direct-conversion method from graphite displays higher elastic constants than its monocrystalline counterpart.

    • Kenichi Tanigaki
    • , Hirotsugu Ogi
    •  & Hassel Ledbetter

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Metallic glasses are normally stronger than their crystalline counterparts, but not good at deforming under tensile stress. Sarac and Schroers test the ductility of metallic glasses in a precisely engineered microsystem and identify an ideal heterostructure with maximized strength and toughness.

    • Baran Sarac
    •  & Jan Schroers

  • Article |

    Grain boundaries have an important role in determining the properties of polycrystalline materials but little has been known about changes in their atomic structure. Timofey Frolov and colleagues show that variations in atomic density in a boundary can produce different and unexpected boundary structures.

    • Timofey Frolov
    • , David L. Olmsted
    •  & Yuri Mishin

  • Article |

    Classical theory predicts that glass dynamics exhibit a singularity at some finite temperature. Zhao et al. test this theory in fossil amber by determining upper bounds of the equilibrium relaxation times, and find no such behaviour even far below the glass transition challenging conventional assumptions.

    • Jing Zhao
    • , Sindee L. Simon
    •  & Gregory B. McKenna

  • Article |

    Mimicking the behaviour of biological tissues requires finding biocompatible materials that can strengthen in response to external forces. Agrawal et al. show that polydomain nematic liquid crystal elastomers become unexpectedly stiffer when subjected to a small amplitude and repetitive compression.

    • Aditya Agrawal
    • , Alin C. Chipara
    •  & Rafael Verduzco

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Low-dimensional materials containing defects such as twin boundaries are known to fail well below their theoretical strength due to surface imperfections. Here, Wang et al. observe strengths close to the ideal limit in gold nanowires with angstrom scale twins, where homogeneous dislocation nucleation controls deformation.

    • Jiangwei Wang
    • , Frederic Sansoz
    •  & Scott X. Mao

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Toughness of metallic glasses varies widely, with values spanning from very brittle to exceptionally tough. Kumar et al.report a characteristic fictive temperature, which can explain this widespread behaviour and provide guidelines for synthesis of ductile metallic glasses.

    • Golden Kumar
    • , Pascal Neibecker
    •  & Jan Schroers

  • Article |

    Glasses are solid when cold, but when mixed with the correct dye can be fluidized by light. Fang et al.show that each photon absorbed in an azobenzen-based molecule layer produces an efficient local heating up to 800 K to melt the glass but without altering the average temperature.

    • G.J. Fang
    • , J.E. Maclennan
    •  & N.A. Clark

  • Article |

    Blood clotting is caused by biopolymer-mediated aggregation of platelets and is enhanced by fast shear flows. Chen et al. find a similar process that arises during the self-assembly of polymer–colloid composites—a process that can be controlled and even reversed by flow rate and interparticle interaction.

    • Hsieh Chen
    • , Mohammad A. Fallah
    •  & Alfredo Alexander-Katz

  • Article |

    Medium-range structural ordering is expected to exist in supercooled liquids yet direct probes of this are difficult to achieve. Capponi et al.report a new metastable phase of organic molecular glasses exhibiting long-living, highly enhanced orientational order above its glass transition temperature.

    • Simona Capponi
    • , Simone Napolitano
    •  & Michael Wübbenhorst

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The optical transitions that occur in rare-earth-doped crystals offer promise for quantum information storage and processing. Kolesovet al.report the optical detection of a single praseodymium ion residing in a crystal host by using an excited-state absorption process to enhance its fluorescence yield.

    • R. Kolesov
    • , K. Xia
    •  & J. Wrachtrup

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The dynamics and structure of the glass transition in liquids is still debated. Using particle-level confocal microscopy, Leocmach and Tanaka investigate supercooled colloidal liquids and distinguish different scenarios for glassy slow dynamics, suggesting that local ordering may only play a minor role.

    • Mathieu Leocmach
    •  & Hajime Tanaka

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The elastic limit represents the maximum stress and strain a material can withstand and is well characterized in many crystalline solids, yet remains elusive for metallic glasses. Here, this limit is investigated in submicron metallic glass structures and is found to be twice as high as that of bulk samples.

    • Lin Tian
    • , Yong-Qiang Cheng
    •  & Evan Ma

  • Article |

    The unique band structure of topological insulators gives rise to insulating bulk and unusual metallic surface properties. By tuning the content of Sb in the ternary compound (Bi1–xSbx)2Te3, Wang and collaborators show it is possible to control the precise features of the band structure in a continuous fashion.

    • Jinsong Zhang
    • , Cui-Zu Chang
    •  & Yayu Wang

  • Article |

    Graphene may be used in nanoscale electronics and devices, but the ability to synthesise uniform graphene with well-controlled layer numbers is necessary for these applications. Using a Ni–Mo alloy, this study demonstrates single-layer graphene growth with 100% surface coverage and tolerance to variations in growth conditions.

    • Boya Dai
    • , Lei Fu
    •  & Zhongfan Liu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    At extreme temperature and pressure, materials can form new dense phases with unusual physical properties. Here, laser-induced microexplosions are used to produce a superdense, stable, body-centred-cubic form of aluminium, which was previously predicted to exist at pressures above 380GPa.

    • Arturas Vailionis
    • , Eugene G. Gamaly
    •  & Saulius Juodkazis

  • Article |

    SiO2 glass and helium are important in various fields of science and engineering. Sato et al. show SiO2glass to be less compressible in helium under high pressure, which may be relevant for the interpretation of high-pressure experiments and in the design of new materials.

    • Tomoko Sato
    • , Nobumasa Funamori
    •  & Takehiko Yagi

  • Article |

    Sintering is the basis for the production of many metallic and composite materials. Gruppet al. use a new technique to measure the rotation of microscopic copper particles during sintering and find intrinsic rotations to be the dominant movement.

    • R. Grupp
    • , M. Nöthe
    •  & J. Banhart

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Pattern-forming processes in simple fluids and suspensions are well understood, but displacement morphologies in frictional fluids and granular mixtures have not been studied extensively. Sandneset al. consider the effects of Coulomb friction and compressibility on the fluid dynamics of granular mixtures.

    • B. Sandnes
    • , E.G. Flekkøy
    •  & H. See

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Embedding carbon fibres in polymer matrices provides significant gains in strength and stiffness. Here, the Raman G peak of carbon fibre is studied in relation to applied strain and referenced to graphene; the work could facilitate stress measurements of carbon fibre polymer composites.

    • Otakar Frank
    • , Georgia Tsoukleri
    •  & Costas Galiotis

  • Article |

    Materials such as rubber tend to soften when cyclically deformed. Here, however, the authors find that bundled actin networks can show cyclic hardening and retain a memory of the maximum strain they have been subjected to.

    • K. M. Schmoller
    • , P. Fernández
    •  & A. R. Bausch

  • Article |

    Improving the properties of metallic alloys is important to develop new lightweight materials. In this paper, we show that an aluminium (Al) alloy containing a hierarchy of nanostructures in a solid solution with a high density of dislocations is capable of beating strength records for Al alloys while maintaining good ductility.

    • Peter V. Liddicoat
    • , Xiao-Zhou Liao
    •  & Simon P. Ringer

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