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TABLE OF CONTENTS
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July 2012 Volume 11, Issue 7 |
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Editorial
Commentary
Research Highlights
News and Views
Review
Letters
Articles
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Magnetoelectric phenomena and devices 24 - 25 September 2012 at The Royal Society, London. This discussion meeting will bring together experts and leaders with an expertise in activity into materials and devices that interconvert magnetic and electrical signals. Free to attend, register now. |

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Editorial |
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La méthode Hollande p559 doi:10.1038/nmat3377 François Hollande, the new French president, has an opportunity to correct and consolidate five years of frantic research reforms under Nicolas Sarkozy.
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Commentary |
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Towards systems materials engineering pp560 - 563 Peidong Yang and Jean-Marie Tarascon doi:10.1038/nmat3367 System-level planning of theoretical and experimental efforts is increasingly important for the development of modern materials science.
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Research Highlights |
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Resist and sense | Visualizing plasmons | Guiding self-assembly | Oxidized spintronics | Ion transistor logic |
News and Views |
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Review |
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Active nanoplasmonic metamaterials pp573 - 584 O. Hess, J. B. Pendry, S. A. Maier, R. F. Oulton, J. M. Hamm and K. L. Tsakmakidis doi:10.1038/nmat3356 Metamaterials have a tremendous potential for applications from biophotonics to optical circuits, although progress has been hampered by intrinsic metal losses. This Review discusses the progress in countering such losses through the use of gain media to realize devices such as nanoplasmonic lasers or improved metamaterials for imaging and nonlinear optical applications. |
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Letters |
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Scanning tunnelling microscopy imaging of symmetry-breaking structural distortion in the bismuth-based cuprate superconductors pp585 - 589 Ilija Zeljkovic, Elizabeth J. Main, Tess L. Williams, M. C. Boyer, Kamalesh Chatterjee, W. D. Wise, Yi Yin, Martin Zech, Adam Pivonka, Takeshi Kondo, T. Takeuchi, Hiroshi Ikuta, Jinsheng Wen, Zhijun Xu, G. D. Gu, E. W. Hudson and Jennifer E. Hoffman doi:10.1038/nmat3315 The so-called pseudogap is a feature of high-Tc superconductors that has puzzled scientists since its discovery. It is of widespread opinion that this feature is associated with a structural symmetry breaking. Now, a highly sensitive scanning tunnelling microscopy experiment shows that a specific structural symmetry is not, as many believed, at the origin of the pseudogap state.
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Electrical control of the superconducting-to-insulating transition in graphene–metal hybrids pp590 - 594 Adrien Allain, Zheng Han and Vincent Bouchiat doi:10.1038/nmat3335 Although intrinsic superconductivity in graphene has not been demonstrated yet, superconductivity in this material can be induced by the proximity effect. The deposition of metallic nanoparticles on a graphene layer allows the status of graphene to be tuned from insulating to superconducting. This metal–graphene hybrid material can therefore be seen as a model system to elucidate the properties of inhomogeneous superconductors.
See also: News and Views by Ioffe & Gershenson |
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A red metallic oxide photocatalyst pp595 - 598 Xiaoxiang Xu, Chamnan Randorn, Paraskevi Efstathiou and John T. S. Irvine doi:10.1038/nmat3312 Light absorption across the bandgap in semiconductors is exploited in many important applications such as photovoltaics, light-emitting diodes and photocatalytic conversion, but whether coloured metals can be used in such applications is unclear. A red metallic oxide Sr1-xNbO3 is now shown to be effective under visible light to photocatalyse the oxidation of methylene blue, and the oxidation and reduction of water.
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Blue-phase templated fabrication of three-dimensional nanostructures for photonic applications pp599 - 603 F. Castles, F. V. Day, S. M. Morris, D-H. Ko, D. J. Gardiner, M. M. Qasim, S. Nosheen, P. J. W. Hands, S. S. Choi, R. H. Friend and H. J. Coles doi:10.1038/nmat3330 Liquid-crystalline order can be templated in a material by refilling a photopolymerized liquid-crystal cast with the material after the non-polymerized portion has been washed out. This approach has now been used to template, in achiral liquid crystals, chiral three-dimensional blue phases with unprecedented thermal stability that are suitable for narrowband mirrorless lasing and switchable electro-optic devices.
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Plasmonic nanosensors with inverse sensitivity by means of enzyme-guided crystal growth pp604 - 607 Laura Rodríguez-Lorenzo, Roberto de la Rica, Ramón A. Álvarez-Puebla, Luis M. Liz-Marzán and Molly M. Stevens doi:10.1038/nmat3337 Conventional sensors generate a signal that is directly proportional to the concentration of the target molecule. Now, by means of an enzyme that controls the growth of silver nanocrystals on plasmonic transducers, a nanosensor with sensitivity that is inversely proportional to concentration and that can detect ultralow concentrations of the cancer biomarker prostate-specific antigen in whole serum is demonstrated.
See also: News and Views by Käll |
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Articles |
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Mechanical metamaterials with negative compressibility transitions pp608 - 613 Zachary G. Nicolaou and Adilson E. Motter doi:10.1038/nmat3331 Most materials expand along the direction of an external pulling force, but there are no materials that compress instead. The proposal of mechanical metamaterials that show such negative compressibility promises new artificial materials with designed functionalities.
See also: News and Views by Grima & Caruana-Gauci |
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A search model for topological insulators with high-throughput robustness descriptors pp614 - 619 Kesong Yang, Wahyu Setyawan, Shidong Wang, Marco Buongiorno Nardelli and Stefano Curtarolo doi:10.1038/nmat3332 Topological insulators exhibit intriguing electronic properties that originate from protected metallic states on their surface. Experimental studies so far are based on a limited number of materials. A high-throughput approach now shows how to search for topological insulators in a variety of unexplored classes of materials.
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Giant magnetocaloric effect driven by structural transitions pp620 - 626 Jian Liu, Tino Gottschall, Konstantin P. Skokov, James D. Moore and Oliver Gutfleisch doi:10.1038/nmat3334 Magnetic cooling could be a radically different energy solution that could replace conventional vapour compression refrigeration in the future. It is now shown that a Heusler-type magnetocaloric alloy exhibits a remarkable cooling capability due to the effect of a sharp structural transformation at a specific temperature. The finding may be of relevance beyond Heusler alloys and represents an important step towards the implementation of cooling systems based on magnetocaloric materials.
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Extraordinarily complex crystal structure with mesoscopic patterning in barium at high pressure pp627 - 632 I. Loa, R. J. Nelmes, L. F. Lundegaard and M. I. McMahon doi:10.1038/nmat3342 Elemental barium at high pressure presents many complex crystal structures that have yet to be determined. The most complex of these crystal structures (phase Ba-IVc at 19 GPa) has now been solved and consists of a commensurate host–guest structure with 768 atoms in the basic unit, where the relative alignment of the guest-atom chains can be represented as a two-dimensional pattern with repeating interlocking motifs.
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In silico screening of carbon-capture materials pp633 - 641 Li-Chiang Lin, Adam H. Berger, Richard L. Martin, Jihan Kim, Joseph A. Swisher, Kuldeep Jariwala, Chris H. Rycroft, Abhoyjit S. Bhown, Michael W. Deem, Maciej Haranczyk and Berend Smit doi:10.1038/nmat3336 Developing capture materials and processes that reduce the energy required to separate carbon dioxide from flue gas in power plants is an important area of research. A computational approach to rank adsorbents for their performance in carbon dioxide capture and storage is now proposed, which will enable hundreds of thousands of zeolitic structures to be screened.
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Extracellular-matrix tethering regulates stem-cell fate pp642 - 649 Britta Trappmann, Julien E. Gautrot, John T. Connelly, Daniel G. T. Strange, Yuan Li, Michelle L. Oyen, Martien A. Cohen Stuart, Heike Boehm, Bojun Li, Viola Vogel, Joachim P. Spatz, Fiona M. Watt and Wilhelm T. S. Huck doi:10.1038/nmat3339 The spreading and differentiation of stem cells is influenced by the mechanical properties—in particular by the stiffness—of the extracellular matrix. Now, experiments on epidermal stem cells cultured on substrates with a covalently attached collagen coating show that stem cells sense the stiffness of the substrate through the anchoring density of collagen fibres.
See also: News and Views by Chaudhuri & Mooney |
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