Physical sciences articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    The transport behavior of high-entropy alloys (HEAs) remains unclear. Here, the authors explore the fundamentals of low-wear and high-conductivity refractory HEAs, examining the cocktail effect in conductivity, and highlight its potential applications in enhancing atomic-scale image resolution.

    • Cheng-Hsien Yeh
    • , Wen-Dung Hsu
    •  & Chuan-Feng Shih

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The instability of perovskite solar cells hinders their commercialization. Here, authors report an industrially compatible strain-free encapsulation process based on lamination of highly viscoelastic semi-solid/highly viscous liquid encapsulant adhesive to reduce thermomechanical interfacial stress.

    • Paolo Mariani
    • , Miguel Ángel Molina-García
    •  & Francesco Bonaccorso

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Emperor penguins colony occupancy is variable and chiefly estimated with remote sensing images at end of the breeding season. Here, the authors provide a phenological model that can extrapolate occupancy from sparse data and can predict phenological events, breeding pairs and fledging chicks.

    • Alexander Winterl
    • , Sebastian Richter
    •  & Daniel P. Zitterbart

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Efficient radiation is essential to reach thermodynamic limit of photovoltaic efficiency. Here, authors design thick quantum barriers to suppress interfacial quenching and boost photon recycling in perovskite cells, achieving high radiation and photovoltaic efficiencies and long device stability.

    • Kyung Mun Yeom
    • , Changsoon Cho
    •  & Jun Hong Noh

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Biological cofactors such as dihydronicotinamides are exploited by extant enzymes as hydride transfer agents and electron carriers but are generally inefficient to facilitate any reactions on their own. Here, the authors report short peptide-based amyloid nanotubes featuring exposed arrays of cationic and hydrophobic residues that can bind small hydride transfer agents (NaBH4) to facilitate efficient reduction of ester substrates in water.

    • Ayan Chatterjee
    • , Surashree Goswami
    •  & Dibyendu Das

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The authors demonstrate ultrabroadband, polarisation-independent directional control of thermal radiation using a pixelated micro-emitter, and produce large emissivity contrast at different directions, with potential applications to radiative cooling, infrared spectroscopy and thermophotovoltaics.

    • Ziwei Fan
    • , Taeseung Hwang
    •  & Zi Jing Wong

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Lee et al. developed ultrathin metallic (metal filling ratios of > 70 %) metamaterials that exhibit perfect transmission at a specific radar frequency. These characteristics enable microwave transparent, low-sheet-resistance radar heaters for safe autonomous driving in extreme weather.

    • Eun-Joo Lee
    • , Jun-Young Kim
    •  & Sun-Kyung Kim

  • Article
    | Open Access

    According to conventional wisdom, angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) can only measure the magnitude of the superconducting gap but not its phase. Here, the authors propose a new method to directly detect the superconducting gap phase using ARPES and validate this technique on a cuprate superconductor.

    • Qiang Gao
    • , Jin Mo Bok
    •  & X. J. Zhou

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Biohydrogen production technologies effectively use waste biomass resources and produce high-purity hydrogen. Here, authors present and evaluate a continuous pilot-scale biohydrogen production system based on spectrum coupling, thermal effect, and multiphase flow properties of hydrogen production.

    • Quanguo Zhang
    • , Youzhou Jiao
    •  & Nadeem Tahir

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Detection and identification of microplastics (MPs) in environmental samples is hampered by the need for isolation and pretreatment methods. Here, the authors combine porous Ag substrates with self-attention neural networks to directly identify six types of MPs in environmental samples.

    • Olga Guselnikova
    • , Andrii Trelin
    •  & Yusuke Yamauchi

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Large-scale 2D hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) grown via chemical vapour deposition (CVD) has strategic importance for various applications of 2D materials. Here, the authors analyse the structural and electrical properties of commercially available CVD hBN from 9 popular suppliers and compare the results with mechanically exfoliated hBN and in-house CVD hBN.

    • Yue Yuan
    • , Jonas Weber
    •  & Mario Lanza

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Transition-metal catalyzed cross-electrophile coupling (XEC) is a powerful tool for the construction of molecules but XEC between carbon electrophile and chlorosilanes to access organosilicon compounds remains underdeveloped. Here the authors disclose a highly efficient cobalt-catalyzed cross-electrophile alkynylation of a broad range of unactivated chlorosilanes with alkynyl sulfides as a stable and practical alkynyl electrophiles.

    • Donghui Xing
    • , Jinlin Liu
    •  & Liangbin Huang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    All-solid-state lithium-based batteries require high stack pressure during operation. Here, we investigate the mechanical, transport, and interfacial properties of Li-rich magnesium alloy and show enhanced performance at low pressure and ambient temperature for alloy-based electrodes with less than 5 at% Mg content.

    • Jack Aspinall
    • , Krishnakanth Sada
    •  & Mauro Pasta

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Researchers demonstrate that image-processing metasurfaces can be dynamically reconfigured by using phase-change materials. The work might lead to novel tunable devices for compact optical computing for applications in AR/VR and bio-medical imaging.

    • Michele Cotrufo
    • , Shaban B. Sulejman
    •  & Andrea Alù

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Zero to ultralow-field NMR provides chemical information in the absence of a high magnetic field but it is difficult to measure molecules with quadrupolar nuclei due to their fast relaxation. This study examines zero-field J-spectra from isotopologues of ammonium cations, with quadrupolar nuclei, revealing the presence of a primary isotope effect of −58 mHz.

    • Román Picazo-Frutos
    • , Kirill F. Sheberstov
    •  & Danila A. Barskiy

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Quantum emitters in Si show promise for applications in quantum information processing and communication due to their potential as spin-photon interfaces. Jhuria et al. report the formation of selected telecom emitters in Si using local writing and erasing by fs laser pulses and annealing in a hydrogen atmosphere.

    • K. Jhuria
    • , V. Ivanov
    •  & T. Schenkel

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Intermittency is the behavior of extreme fluctuations observed in the flow of a fluid that is often associated with high Reynolds numbers. Here, the authors report intermittency in elastic turbulence at the low Reynolds number and high Deborah number limit.

    • Rahul K. Singh
    • , Prasad Perlekar
    •  & Marco E. Rosti

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The researchers showcase a silicon-photonics-based analog approach for large-scale image processing that can be deployed for high-speed image compression and de-noising using an auto-encoder framework with minimal power consumption.

    • Xiao Wang
    • , Brandon Redding
    •  & Raktim Sarma

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Efflux pumps confer antibiotic resistance by coupling proton import with drug export. In this work, the authors uncover the proton-coupled transport mechanism for the clinically relevant efflux pump NorA from the pathogenic bacterium S. aureus.

    • Jianping Li
    • , Yan Li
    •  & Nathaniel J. Traaseth

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Precision control of stereochemistry in radical reactions remains a formidable challenge. Here the authors demonstrate an electricity driven asymmetric Lewis acid catalysis to facilitate asymmetric dienylation and allylation reactions, resulting in the formation of all-carbon quaternary stereocenters.

    • Qinglin Zhang
    • , Jiayin Zhang
    •  & Chang Guo

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Reconstructing the structure of a complex networked system and predicting its time evolution to understand its functions are usually two subjects that are treated separately. The authors propose a theoretical framework based on information theory, that uncovers the relation between reconstructability and predictability in networked systems.

    • Charles Murphy
    • , Vincent Thibeault
    •  & Patrick Desrosiers

  • Article
    | Open Access

    There are now several van der Waals magnets that have been shown to host skyrmions, however, these are typically hampered by a low Curie temperature, restricting the temperature at which the skyrmions can exist. Here, Zhang, Jiang, Jiang and coauthors find a skyrmion lattice in the van der Waals magnet Fe3 − xGaTe2 above room temperature and demonstrate the critical role of symmetry breaking in crystal lattice in the origin of these skyrmions.

    • Chenhui Zhang
    • , Ze Jiang
    •  & Hyunsoo Yang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A consistency issue with the production of porous polymer-based radiative coatings can be a significant drop in the cooling performance when dried under humid conditions. This issue is efficiently resolved by adding polymer reinforcement.

    • Dongpyo Hong
    • , Yong Joon Lee
    •  & Sang Yoon Park

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Photoluminescence from plasmonic nanostructures exhibits diverse wavelength dependent nonlinear behaviors with debated origins. Here, authors use plasmonic gap mode resonators with precise nanoscale confinement to show this nonlinear emission can become dominated by non-Fermi carrier contributions.

    • Robert Lemasters
    • , Manoj Manjare
    •  & Hayk Harutyunyan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Assessing failure pressure is critical in determining pipeline integrity. In this study, based on the unified yield criterion, authors propose a limit state equation for steel pipes under various loads which can be converted into a series of failure pressure evaluation models for pipeline with different yield criteria.

    • Ming-ming Sun
    • , Hong-yuan Fang
    •  & Ke-Jie Zhai

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Polaritons – hybrid light-matter excitations – in van der Waals materials hold promise for photonics applications below the diffraction limit. Here, the authors demonstrate in-plane steering and cloaking of phonon polaritons in assembled micro-structures based on α-MoO3 films with misaligned crystallographic orientations.

    • Hanchao Teng
    • , Na Chen
    •  & Qing Dai

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Intelligent agents can perform two types of behavior, habitual and goal-directed. The authors propose a deep learning framework using a variational Bayes approach, which computationally explains many aspects of the interaction between the two types of behaviors in sensorimotor tasks.

    • Dongqi Han
    • , Kenji Doya
    •  & Jun Tani

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Metasurface-based architectures enhance light-matter interactions between a terahertz photonic mode and glucose vibrational resonance. This platform allows new physical and chemical properties of hybrid light-matter states to be exploited.

    • Ahmed Jaber
    • , Michael Reitz
    •  & Jean-Michel Ménard

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Switchable structural and physical bistability in ferroelectric materials can be achieved as result of molecular orbital breaking. Here, the authors describe the photo-mediated bistability in organosilicon Schiff base ferroelectric crystals for the modulation of dielectric, second-harmonic generation, and ferroelectric polarization and showing good in vitro biocompatibility.

    • Zhu-Xiao Gu
    • , Nan Zhang
    •  & Han-Yue Zhang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The noncovalent interaction of ammonium ion with multidentate oxygen-based host serving as a key reacting center in catalytic reactions is rare. In this work, the authors report a noncovalent interaction of ammonium ion enabled reactivity enhancement process, achieving the C–H functionalization of polyethylene glycols with acrylates.

    • Zongnan Zhang
    • , Xueli Lv
    •  & Rong Zeng

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The authors study tunneling junctions in rhombohedral MoS2 bilayers and correlate their performance with the local domain layout. They show that the switching behavior in sliding ferroelectrics is strongly dependent on the pre-existing domain structure.

    • Yunze Gao
    • , Astrid Weston
    •  & Roman Gorbachev

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The authors study the [Nb/V/Ta] superconducting artificial superlattice, known to support a superconducting diode effect, by pulsed THz spectroscopy and simultaneous transport. They found a non-monotonic switching between the superconducting and normal state, which can be explained if the THz-driven vortex depinning determines the critical current.

    • Fumiya Sekiguchi
    • , Hideki Narita
    •  & Yoshihiko Kanemitsu

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