Structural materials articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Nanostructured materials made from multimetal alloys are attractive for catalytic applications. Here, the authors propose a soft-templating approach to prepare mesoporous PtPdRhRuCu nanospheres that feature exposed porous structures rich in highly entropic alloy sites.

    • Yunqing Kang
    • , Ovidiu Cretu
    •  & Yusuke Yamauchi

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Liquid crystal elastomer printing methods are often limited to planar structures. In this work, authors integrate 4D printed structures with fully impregnated composite interfaces to enable programmable deformation ability and high bearing capacity by adjusting the off-centre distribution of the fibres.

    • Qingrui Wang
    • , Xiaoyong Tian
    •  & Dichen Li

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Interplay between structure and composition of grain boundaries remains elusive, particularly at the atomic level. Here, the authors discover the atomic motifs, which is the smallest structural unit, control the most important chemical properties of grain boundaries.

    • Xuyang Zhou
    • , Ali Ahmadian
    •  & Dierk Raabe

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Despite widely used in the construction sector, Portland cement’s high brittleness and low toughness still pose challenges in some applications. Here, authors apply an ice-templating method to fabricate a cement-hydrogel composite with alternating layered microstructure resulting in significantly increased toughness.

    • Yuan Chen
    • , Yangzezhi Zheng
    •  & Changwen Miao

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Silica glass is a high-performance material used in most branches of society from glassware and windows to optical lenses and fibers. Here, we develop a sintering-free method for 3D printing silica glass with sub-micrometer resolution and successfully demonstrate an optical microtoroid resonator.

    • Po-Han Huang
    • , Miku Laakso
    •  & Frank Niklaus

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Predictive scheme for Ti alloys with equiaxed microstructures is often limited by the methods based on growth restriction factors, Q. Here, the authors present a predictive solution based on the freezing range of alloys for columnar to equiaxed transition during fusion-based additive manufacturing.

    • Mohan S. K. K. Y. Nartu
    • , Brian A. Welk
    •  & Hamish L. Fraser

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Developing materials which mimic thermal homeostasis is limited by complicated fabrication steps or unidirectional temperature transport. Here, the authors develop a homeostatic hydrogel that shows improved heat trapping at low temperatures, and enhanced evaporative cooling at high temperatures.

    • Gyeongsuk Park
    • , Hyunmin Park
    •  & Steve Park

  • Article
    | Open Access

    High-performance fibers are promising materials in the impact protection field but fabricating fibers with high strength and high toughness is challenging. Here, the authors polymerize carbon nanotubes into aramid fibers to simultaneously improve strength and toughness.

    • Jiajun Luo
    • , Yeye Wen
    •  & Jin Zhang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Structural superlubricity (SSL) is a state of nearly zero friction and no wear between two contacted solid surfaces. Here, authors show that, by preventing edge contact with the substrate, a microscale graphite flake can achieve robust SSL against nanostructured silicon surfaces under ambient condition.

    • Xuanyu Huang
    • , Tengfei Li
    •  & Quanshui Zheng

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Optically transparent wood composites are commonly prepared by delignification of wood and subsequent infiltration of thermo- or photocurable polymer resins but the fabrication is still limited by the intrinsic low mesopore volume of the delignified wood. Here, the authors report a facile approach to fabricate transparent wood using wood xerogel which allows solvent-free infiltration of resin monomers into the wood cell wall under ambient conditions.’

    • Shennan Wang
    • , Lengwan Li
    •  & Qi Zhou

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In this work, the authors use near-field ptychographic nanotomography to visualize cement hydration in situ. They report hydration features with submicrometer detail including calcium silicate dissolution rates, etch-pit growth rates and water-to-air porosity evolution.

    • Shiva Shirani
    • , Ana Cuesta
    •  & Miguel A. G. Aranda

  • Article
    | Open Access

    There is a lack of guiding parameters to design metallic materials such as high-entropy alloys with strength-ductility synergy. Here, the authors propose such an effective parameter κ, the ratio of short-ranged interactions between closed-pack planes, experimentally validated by six alloys.

    • Zongrui Pei
    • , Shiteng Zhao
    •  & Michael C. Gao

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Despite advances in additive manufacturing of piezoceramics, resultant transducers generally suffer from high porosity, weak piezoelectric responses, and limited geometry. Here, authors report the design and printing of fully packaged freeform ultrasonic transducers capable of traveling inside mm-sized channels and deliver localized high ultrasound energy.

    • Haotian Lu
    • , Huachen Cui
    •  & Xiaoyu (Rayne) Zheng

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In 3D ceramic printing, the need for additional supports can increase processing time and introduce defects during post-processing removal. Here, authors merge direct ink writing and up-conversion particles-assisted photopolymerization under near-infrared irradiation for support-free printing with controlled curing rates reducing material waste, printing time, and post-processing steps.

    • Yongqin Zhao
    • , Junzhe Zhu
    •  & Ren Liu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    It is challenging to fully characterize solidification in a well-homogenized conditions owing to the gravity effect. Here the authors perform microgravity experiments and simulations to show interpenetration of spatial domains of different crystal orientations during alloy solidification.

    • Younggil Song
    • , Fatima L. Mota
    •  & Alain Karma

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Here, the authors utilise a combination of quasi-spherical theory and Jahn-Teller distortion to enhance the piezoelectric response of molecular metal halides, and the resulting piezoelectric energy harvesters exhibit superior power densities to the best-reported molecular hybrid energy harvesters.

    • Sasa Wang
    • , Asif Abdullah Khan
    •  & Edward H. Sargent

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Manipulation of Janus particles is challenging and has limited precision. Here, the authors propose manipulation of Janus particles by optical forces in the evanescent field of an optical nanofiber, and demonstrate that they exhibit strong transverse localization on the nanofiber and much faster propulsion compared to all-dielectric particles of the same size.

    • Georgiy Tkachenko
    • , Viet Giang Truong
    •  & Síle Nic Chormaic

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Thick panel origami holds great potential in engineering structures, but conventional fabrication processes limit their design and applications. Here the authors report a multimaterial 3D printing-based design and fabrication strategy for thick-panel origami structures with push-to-pull deformation.

    • Haitao Ye
    • , Qingjiang Liu
    •  & Qi Ge

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Reconfigurable elastic properties are essential for functional mechanical metamaterials. Here, the authors propose a 3D metamaterial with engineered zero modes, and experimentally demonstrate its transformability covering all seven extremal metamaterial types, leading to programmable wave functions.

    • Zhou Hu
    • , Zhibo Wei
    •  & Gengkai Hu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Corrosion is a ubiquitous failure mode in materials. Here the authors report a percolating 1D wormhole corrosion morphology using advanced electron microscopy and theoretical simulations. The work presents a vacancy mapping method with nm-resolution, identifying the incubation sites of the wormholes.

    • Yang Yang
    • , Weiyue Zhou
    •  & Andrew M. Minor

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Self-healing materials hold great promise for applications in wearable electronics, artificial muscles and soft robots but selfhealing at subzero temperatures remains a great challenge. Here, the authors present a robust subzero healable glassy polymer by incorporating polyphenol nano-assemblies with a large number of end groups into polymerizable deep eutectic solvent elastomers.

    • Nan Wang
    • , Xin Yang
    •  & Xinxing Zhang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Paracrystalline state is still challenging to reach in alloy systems in a controlled manner. Here, the authors present an atomic-level tailoring route to create paracrystalline Zr-Nb-Hf-Ta-Mo high-entropy alloy through local amorphization induced by atomic-level Pt with negative mixing enthalpy.

    • Xingjia He
    • , Yu Zhang
    •  & Weitao Zheng

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Development of Soft shape-memory materials is often limited to the synthesis of two-dimensional specimens and rely on bending mechanisms and scaffolding topology to perform three-dimensional morphing. Here, the authors demonstrate a shape-memory composite material made from main-chain liquid crystal elastomer microparticles dispersed in a silicone polymer matrix which enables molding into full-volume objects of any shape or size.

    • Matej Bobnar
    • , Nikita Derets
    •  & Andraž Rešetič

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Oxygen has long been considered as a detrimental impurity in pure titanium since it can severely deteriorate the ductility. Here, the authors propose a simple, yet effective strategy via grain refinement to solve this long-standing issue, while preserving its potential hardening effect.

    • Yan Chong
    • , Reza Gholizadeh
    •  & Nobuhiro Tsuji

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The mechanism governing structural relaxation in metallic glasses remains elusive, hampering their stability and engineering applications. Here, the authors reveal a distinct relaxation mechanism with a stretching exponent of 3/7, providing new insight for understanding the nature of glass.

    • Yi-Tao Sun
    • , Rui Zhao
    •  & Wei-Hua Wang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The corrosion properties of engineering alloys are strongly influenced by local variations seen at the micro level. Here, the authors demonstrate how the metal grain orientation can influence the protectiveness of the oxide, which provides a possible route for improving corrosion performance.

    • Maria S. Yankova
    • , Alistair Garner
    •  & Philipp Frankel

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Soft robotics holds promise for realizing easy control over complex locomotion and deformation. Lin et al. report an earthworm-inspired untethered magnetic robot that consists one-piece-mold folded diaphragm to achieve large three-dimensional deformation with inside-volume change capability.

    • Dezhao Lin
    • , Fan Yang
    •  & Ruihong Li

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Commercial maraging alloys provide high strength and toughness by traditional precipitation strengthening mechanism. Here, the authors demonstrate a new strategy involving deformable precipitates and their dynamic phase transformation resulting in a twofold enhancement of strength and ductility.

    • Hyun Chung
    • , Won Seok Choi
    •  & Seok Su Sohn

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Catastrophically mechanical failure, of soft self-healing materials often stems from its poor resistance to crack, propagation. Here, the authors present a strategy of surpassing trade-off, between soft self-healing and high fracture toughness, enabling the, conversion of soft and weak into soft yet tough self-healing materials.

    • FuYao Sun
    • , LongFei Liu
    •  & JiaJun Fu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The avalanche of publications challenges the norm that researchers extract knowledge from literature to design materials. Here the authors present a text-mining method that is implemented based on the abstracts of 6.4 million papers to enable the design of new high entropy alloys.

    • Zongrui Pei
    • , Junqi Yin
    •  & Dierk Raabe

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Fragility describes the sharpness of dynamical arrest of a melt at its glass transition, yet its structural origin remains elusive. Shi et al. show that fragility inversely correlates with the medium-range order structure characterized by a measurable parameter named the average medium-range distance.

    • Ying Shi
    • , Binghui Deng
    •  & Douglas C. Allan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Structural coloration - i.e. colors arising from light interference in microstructures - is a good resource for several applications but usually involves elaborate fabrication techniques. Here, the authors achieve controllable coloration using silica particles embedded in a rearrangeable polymer network.

    • Juan Xue
    • , Xuewu Yin
    •  & Jiaxi Cui

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