Imparting Metal Oxides with High Sensitivity Toward Light‐Activated NO₂ Detection Via Tailored Interfacial Chemistry (Adv. Funct. Mater. 17/2023)

Interfacial Chemistry Regulation via a Skin-Grafting Strategy Enables High-Performance Lithium-Metal Batteries.

The lithium (Li) metal anode suffers severe interfacial instability from its high reactivity toward liquid electrolytes, especially carbonate-based electrolytes, resulting in poor electrochemical performance of batteries that use 4 V high-capacity cathodes. We report a new skin-grafting strategy that stabilizes the Li metal-liquid electrolyte interface by coating the Li metal surface with poly(...

Materials and Wireless Microfluidic Systems for Electronics Capable of Chemical Dissolution on Demand (Adv. Funct. Mater. 92015)

Self-arrangement of nanoparticles toward crystalline metal oxides with high surface areas and tunable 3D mesopores.

We demonstrate a new design concept where the interaction between silica nanoparticles (about 1.5 nm in diameter) with titania nanoparticles (anatase, about 4 nm or 6 nm in diameter) guides a successful formation of mesoporous titania with crystalline walls and controllable porosity. At an appropriate solution pH (~1.5, depending on the deprotonation tendencies of two types of nanoparticles), t...

Metamaterials: Snapping Mechanical Metamaterials under Tension (Adv. Mater. 39/2015).

By exploiting snap-through instabilities, D. Pasini and co-workers design a damage-tolerant mechanical metamaterial that snaps sequentially under tension, thereby accommodating a very large deformation up to 150%. On page 5931, they describe how the nonlinear mechanical response of the metamaterial can be robustly programmed by tuning the architecture of its unit cell.

Transition metal oxides: multiferroics go high-TC.

The discovery by Tsuyoshi Kimura and colleagues of a multiferroic coupling in cupric oxide up to 230 K, as reported on page 291 of this issue1, is all the more remarkable as physicists had been wondering for a long time if it is possible at all to align electric dipoles by magnetic fields or change the direction of magnetization by applying voltage. To some, such a magnetoelectric coupling may ...