Materials for devices articles within Nature Communications

Featured

  • Article |

    Soft actuators bearing rapid responsiveness and large-scale actuation are desirable for many biomimetic applications. Here, Zhao et al.build a polymer actuator with a porous architecture, which allows a fast bending response at a timescale of seconds through absorbing a variety of solvent vapours.

    • Qiang Zhao
    • , John W. C. Dunlop
    •  & Jiayin Yuan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Understanding the resistive switching mechanism in oxide-based memories is an ongoing challenge. Here, the authors isolate an unintentional interfacial layer as the origin of resistive switching in Pt/Nb:SrTiO3junctions, and show that suitable processing can remove this unwanted contribution.

    • Evgeny Mikheev
    • , Brian D. Hoskins
    •  & Susanne Stemmer

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Materials capable of colour changes in response to stimuli are useful in sensors and other applications. Here the authors show a conjugated polymer that rapidly responds to the presence of water, and use it as a sensor to map active sweat pores as a means of fingerprint analysis.

    • Joosub Lee
    • , Minkyeong Pyo
    •  & Jong-Man Kim

  • Article |

    Efficiently harvesting energy from ambient motion is important for realising cost-effective and clean electrical energy. Here, the authors report a planar-structured rotary triboelectric generator with 24% efficiency for obtaining power from light wind, body movement and water flow.

    • Guang Zhu
    • , Jun Chen
    •  & Zhong Lin Wang

  • Article |

    Stretchable electrodes provide the foundation for many applications but optimising the architecture to balance performance and flexibility is challenging. Here, the authors show that fractal designs offer new opportunities to tune the mechanical properties of such structures.

    • Jonathan A. Fan
    • , Woon-Hong Yeo
    •  & John A. Rogers

  • Article |

    Colour changes in response to external stimuli are common in nature, from turkey skin to butterfly wings. Here, inspired by this behaviour, the authors have developed a sensor capable of providing an individual colour response to specific target chemicals using genetically engineered viruses.

    • Jin-Woo Oh
    • , Woo-Jae Chung
    •  & Seung-Wuk Lee

  • Article |

    Ionic polymer actuators are becoming popular for biomimetic applications because of their mechanical robustness and easy fabrication at low cost. Kim et al.push them one step closer to practice by achieving a subsecond actuation response at an operation voltage less than 1 V.

    • Onnuri Kim
    • , Tae Joo Shin
    •  & Moon Jeong Park

  • Article |

    The control of regulatory enzymes is essential for the modulation of biochemical cellular pathways. Here, the authors fabricate a tweezer-like DNA nanodevice to actuate the activity of an enzyme/cofactor pair, and are able to control enzyme inhibition and activation over multiple cycles.

    • Minghui Liu
    • , Jinglin Fu
    •  & Hao Yan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Magnetometers based on organic magnetoresistance are limited by narrow sensitivity ranges, degradation and temperature fluctuations. Bakeret al. demonstrate a magnetic resonance-based organic thin film magnetometer, which overcomes these drawbacks by exploiting the metrological nature of magnetic resonance.

    • W.J. Baker
    • , K. Ambal
    •  & C. Boehme

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Micromechanical oscillators present a route to miniaturisation of devices and may be used as frequency references or sensitive sensors, but their small size means that they often behave nonlinearly. Antonioet al. demonstrate frequency stabilisation of nonlinear resonators by coupling two vibrational modes.

    • Dario Antonio
    • , Damián H. Zanette
    •  & Daniel López

  • Article |

    Organic electronic devices are promising for many applications, particularly in biomedical research, but are hindered by thermal instability and low melting points. Now, organic thin-film transistors are shown with excellent thermal properties that can withstand medical sterilization processes.

    • Kazunori Kuribara
    • , He Wang
    •  & Takao Someya

  • Article |

    The mechanism through which ice forms on surfaces is of broad technological relevance. This study examines the manner in which ice forms on so-called 'icephobic' surfaces, and demonstrates that simple changes in the environmental conditions can render the icephobicity ineffective.

    • Stefan Jung
    • , Manish K. Tiwari
    •  & Dimos Poulikakos

  • Article |

    The manipulation of electrons forms the basis of modern technology, whereas electrical signalling processes in nature are based on ions and protons. Rolandi and colleagues present a proton transistor based on polysaccharide nanofibres, which can control the flow of protonic currents.

    • Chao Zhong
    • , Yingxin Deng
    •  & Marco Rolandi

  • Article |

    Brillouin interactions between sound and light can excite mechanical resonances in photonic microsystems, with potential for sensing and frequency reference applications. The authors demonstrate experimental excitation of mechanical resonances ranging from 49 to 1,400 MHz using forward Brillouin scattering.

    • Gaurav Bahl
    • , John Zehnpfennig
    •  & Tal Carmon

  • Article |

    Waveplates are used in optoelectronics to alter the polarization of light, but they do not typically perform achromatically, which is important for applications such as three-dimensional displays. Here, biologically inspired periodically multilayered structures are produced, which function as achromatic visible-light waveplates.

    • Yi-Jun Jen
    • , Akhlesh Lakhtakia
    •  & Jyun-Rong Lai

Browse broader subjects

Browse narrower subjects

Browse Materials for devices across other nature.com journals