Experiments and simulations explain the unusual nature of the structure’s springiness.

Corrugations strongly affect the electronic and optical properties of two-dimensional materials, and could be used to develop e.g. ultrathin pressure sensors, electronic waveguides, or hydrogen-storage devices. That requires fine control of the structure and geometry of the wrinkles, and thus a reliable and flexible method to generate them. This work shows how polymeric microactuators can be used to induce ordered arrays of wrinkles on graphene. Moreover, its proof-of-concept experiment demonstrates the potential of mechanical actuators to tune the corrugation of other two-dimensional materials as well.

• Graphene
• Mechanics
• Optoelectronics

The shells of some mollusk species have compact helical structures that researchers propose develop from the self-assembly of a liquid-crystalline material.

An algorithm that already predicts how proteins fold might also shed light on the physical principles that dictate this folding.

• Acoustics
• Materials Science
• Soft Matter