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Biological systems convert chemical energy into mechanical work by using protein catalysts that assume kinetically controlled conformational states. Synthetic chemomechanical systems using chemical catalysis have been reported, but they are slow, require high temperatures to operate, or indirectly perform work by harnessing reaction products in liquids (e.g., heat or protons). Here, we introduce a bioinspired chemical strategy for gas-phase chemomechanical transduction that sequences the elementary steps of catalytic reactions on ultrathin (total = 1 atm). When fueled by hydrogen gas and either oxygen or ozone gas, we show how kinetically controlled surface states of the catalyst can be exploited to achieve fast actuation (600 ms/cycle) at 20 °C. We also show that the approach can integrate photochemically controlled reactions and can be used to drive the reconfiguration of microhinges and complex origami- and kirigami-based microstructures.

Tuning electrical conductivity of semiconducting materials through substitutional doping is crucial for fabricating functional devices. This, however, has not been fully realized in two-dimensional (2D) materials due to the difficulty of homogeneously controlling the dopant concentrations and the lack of systematic study of the net impact of substitutional dopants separate from that of the unintentional doping from the device fabrication processes. Here, we grow wafer-scale, continuous MoS2 monolayers with tunable concentrations of Nb and Re and fabricate devices using a polymer-free approach to study the direct electrical impact of substitutional dopants in MoS2 monolayers. In particular, the electrical conductivity of Nb doped MoS2 in the absence of electrostatic gating is reproducibly tuned over 7 orders of magnitude by controlling the Nb concentration. Our study further indicates that the dopant carriers do not fully ionize in the 2D limit, unlike in their three-dimensional analogues, which is explained by weaker charge screening and impurity band conduction. Moreover, we show that the dopants are stable, which enables the doped films to be processed as independent building blocks that can be used as electrodes for functional circuitry.

Cilial pumping is a powerful strategy used by biological organisms to control and manipulate fluids at the microscale. However, despite numerous recent advances in optically, magnetically and electrically driven actuation, development of an engineered cilial platform with the potential for applications has remained difficult to realize

Crystalline oxides spanning very broad 5.4- to 8.6-eV bandgaps are successfully grown on sapphire by MBE., Ultrawide-bandgap semiconductors are ushering in the next generation of high-power electronics. The correct crystal orientation can make or break successful epitaxy of such semiconductors. Here, it is found that single-crystalline layers of α-(AlGa)2O3 alloys spanning bandgaps of 5.4 to 8.6 eV can be grown by molecular beam epitaxy. The key step is found to be the use of m-plane sapphire crystal. The phase transition of the epitaxial layers from the α- to the narrower bandgap β-phase is catalyzed by the c-plane of the crystal. Because the c-plane is orthogonal to the growth front of the m-plane surface of the crystal, the narrower bandgap pathways are eliminated, revealing a route to much wider bandgap materials with structural purity. The resulting energy bandgaps of the epitaxial layers span a broad range, heralding the successful epitaxial stabilization of the largest bandgap materials family to date.

We have developed a fabrication process that can be used to build millions of microscopic, electronically-integrated robots. Our procedure includes steps for building silicon microelectronics, building components for actuation, encapsulation steps, and a process for releasing the robots into aqueous environments. Each step is carried out massively in parallel, allowing us to build over a million robots on a single 4-inch wafer. Broadly, the new actuators and fabrication protocols presented here offer a generic platform and can be used to make a wide range of silicon-based, functional robotic systems that are too small to be resolved by the naked eye.

Origami design principles are scale invariant and enable direct miniaturization of origami structures provided the sheets used for folding have equal thickness to length ratios. Recently, seminal steps have been taken to fabricate microscale origami using unidirectionally actuated sheets with nanoscale thickness. Here, we extend the full power of origami-inspired fabrication to nanoscale sheets by engineering bidirectional folding with 4 nm thick atomic layer deposition (ALD) SiNx-SiO2 bilayer films. Strain differentials within these bilayers result in bending, producing microscopic radii of curvature. We lithographically pattern these bilayers and localize the bending using rigid panels to fabricate a variety of complex micro-origami devices. Upon release, these devices self-fold according to prescribed patterns. Our approach combines planar semiconductor microfabrication methods with computerized origami design, making it easy to fabricate and deploy such microstructures en masse. These devices represent an important step forward in the fabrication and assembly of deployable micromechanical systems that can interact with and manipulate micro- and nanoscale environments., Comment: This document is the unedited Author's version of a Submitted Work that was subsequently accepted for publication in Nano Letters, copyright American Chemical Society after peer review. To access the final edited and published work see: https://pubs.acs.org/articlesonrequest/AOR-JJHKJZVTJF4JFWSYZ2NW

Tuning electrical conductivity of semiconducting materials through substitutional doping is crucial for fabricating functional devices. This, however, has not been fully realized in two-dimensional (2D) materials due to the difficulty of homogeneously controlling the dopant concentrations and the lack of systematic study of the net impact of substitutional dopants separate from that of the unintentional doping from the device fabrication processes. Here, we grow wafer-scale, continuous MoS

Friedel's law guarantees an inversion-symmetric diffraction pattern for thin, light materials where a kinematic approximation or a single-scattering model holds. Typically, breaking Friedel symmetry is ascribed to multiple scattering events within thick, non-centrosymmetric crystals. However, two-dimensional (2D) materials such as a single monolayer of MoS$_2$ can also violate Friedel's law, with unexpected contrast between conjugate Bragg peaks. We show analytically that retaining higher order terms in the power series expansion of the scattered wavefunction can describe the anomalous contrast between $hkl$ and $\overline{hkl}$ peaks that occurs in 2D crystals with broken in-plane inversion symmetry. These higher-order terms describe multiple scattering paths starting from the same atom in an atomically thin material. Furthermore, 2D materials containing heavy elements, such as WS$_2$, always act as strong phase objects, violating Friedel's law no matter how high the energy of the incident electron beam. Experimentally, this understanding can enhance diffraction-based techniques to provide rapid imaging of polarity, twin domains, in-plane rotations, or other polar textures in 2D materials., Comment: 26 pages, 5 main figures, 3 supplemental figures, submitted to Ultramicroscopy

The local structure and geometry of catalytic interfaces can influence the selectivity of chemical reactions. Selectivity is often critical for the practical realization of reactions such as the electroreduction of carbon dioxide (CO

Fifty years of Moore’s law scaling in microelectronics have brought remarkable opportunities for the rapidly evolving field of microscopic robotics1–5. Electronic, magnetic and optical systems now offer an unprecedented combination of complexity, small size and low cost6,7, and could be readily appropriated for robots that are smaller than the resolution limit of human vision (less than a hundred micrometres)8–11. However, a major roadblock exists: there is no micrometre-scale actuator system that seamlessly integrates with semiconductor processing and responds to standard electronic control signals. Here we overcome this barrier by developing a new class of voltage-controllable electrochemical actuators that operate at low voltages (200 microvolts), low power (10 nanowatts) and are completely compatible with silicon processing. To demonstrate their potential, we develop lithographic fabrication-and-release protocols to prototype sub-hundred-micrometre walking robots. Every step in this process is performed in parallel, allowing us to produce over one million robots per four-inch wafer. These results are an important advance towards mass-manufactured, silicon-based, functional robots that are too small to be resolved by the naked eye. A new class of voltage-controllable electrochemical actuators that are compatible with silicon processing are used to produce over one million sub-hundred-micrometre walking robots on a single four-inch wafer.

The local structure and geometry of catalytic interfaces can influence the selectivity of chemical reactions. Here, using a pre-strained polymer, we uniaxially compress a thin gold film to form a nano-folded catalyst. We observe two kinds of folds and can tune the ratio of loose to tight folds by varying the extent of pre-strain in the polymer. We characterize the nano-folded catalysts using x-ray diffraction, scanning, and transmission electron microscopy. We observe grain reorientation and coarsening in the nano-folded gold catalysts. Electroreduction of carbon dioxide with these nano-folded catalysts reveals an enhancement of Faradaic efficiency for carbon monoxide formation by a factor of about four. This result suggests that electrolyte mass transport limitations and an increase of the local pH in the tight folds of the catalyst outweigh the effects of alterations in grain characteristics. Together, our studies demonstrate that nano-folded geometries can significantly alter grain characteristics, mass transport, and catalytic selectivity.

Next-generation, atomically thin devices require in-plane, one-dimensional heterojunctions to electrically connect different two-dimensional (2D) materials. However, the lattice mismatch between most 2D materials leads to unavoidable strain, dislocations, or ripples, which can strongly affect their mechanical, optical, and electronic properties. We have developed an approach to map 2D heterojunction lattice and strain profiles with sub-picometer precision and to identify dislocations and out-of-plane ripples. We collected diffraction patterns from a focused electron beam for each real-space scan position with a high-speed, high dynamic range, momentum-resolved detector - the electron microscope pixel array detector (EMPAD). The resulting four-dimensional (4D) phase space datasets contain the full spatially resolved lattice information of the sample. By using this technique on tungsten disulfide (WS2) and tungsten diselenide (WSe2) lateral heterostructures, we have mapped lattice distortions with 0.3 pm precision across multi-micron fields of view and simultaneously observed the dislocations and ripples responsible for strain relaxation in 2D laterally-epitaxial structures.

What does the diffraction pattern from a single atom look like? How does it differ from the scattering from long-range potential? With the development of new high-dynamic range pixel array detectors to measure the complete momentum distribution, these questions have immediate relevance for designing and understanding momentum-resolved imaging modes. We explore the asymptotic limits of long-range and short-range potentials. We use a simple quantum mechanical model to explain the general and asymptotic limits for the probability distribution in both real and reciprocal space. Features in the scattering potential much larger than the probe size cause the bright field (BF) disk to deflect uniformly, while features much smaller than the probe size, instead of a deflection, cause a redistribution of intensity within the BF disk. Because long-range and short-range features are encoded differently in the diffraction pattern, it is possible to separate their contributions in differential phase-contrast (DPC) or center-of-mass (CoM) imaging. The shape profiles for atomic resolution CoM imaging are dominated by the shape of the probe gradient and not the highly singular atomic potentials or their local fields. Instead, only the peak height shows an atomic number sensitivity, whose precise dependence is determined by the convergence angle. At lower convergence angles, the contrast oscillates with increasing atomic number, similar to BF imaging. The range of collection angles impacts DPC and CoM imaging differently, with CoM being more sensitive to the upper cutoff limit, while DPC is more sensitive to the lower cutoff.