Materials science articles within Nature Physics

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Interactions between a localized magnetic moment and electrons in a metal can produce an emergent resonance that affects the metal’s properties. A realization of this Kondo effect in MoS2 provides an opportunity to study it in microscopic detail.

    • Camiel van Efferen
    • , Jeison Fischer
    •  & Wouter Jolie

  • News & Views |

    Permanent deformation in solids results from atoms not aligning with the external stress causing the deformation. Detecting such non-affine atomic rearrangements and connecting them to measurable mechanical effects is now shown to be feasible by means of high-energy X-ray diffraction.

    • Saswati Ganguly

  • News & Views |

    A detailed understanding of phonon transport is crucial for engineering the thermal properties of materials. A particular doping strategy is now shown to lead to good thermoelectric performance with low thermal conductivity.

    • Zhilun Lu

  • News & Views |

    Understanding lattice-geometry-driven electronic structure and orbital character in a titanium-based superconducting kagome metal provides insights into the non-trivial topology and electronic nematicity of correlated quantum matter.

    • Bahadur Singh

  • News & Views |

    Currently, a general framework explaining the fundamental dynamic transitions from solid to fluid of mechanically probed soft materials is lacking. Now, a unifying van der Waals-like model is proposed that describes the dynamic solid–liquid transition in the rheology of these materials.

    • Nick Oikonomeas-Koppasis
    •  & Peter Schall

  • Research Briefing |

    An approach combining single-cell imaging, agent-based simulations, and continuum mechanics theory is used to observe the effect of environmental stiffness on biofilm development. These measurements indicate that confined biofilms behave as active nematics, in which the internal organization and cell lineage are controlled by the shape and boundary of the biofilm.

  • Article |

    Confined biofilms can shape themselves and their boundary to modify their internal organisation. This mechanism could inform the development of active materials that control their own geometry.

    • Japinder Nijjer
    • , Changhao Li
    •  & Jing Yan

  • News & Views |

    Disordered systems that are far from equilibrium relax slowly towards their equilibrium. Now, we learn that the irreversible plastic deformations that form the wrinkles of a crumpled sheet result in a complex energy landscape that ages logarithmically.

    • Kari Dalnoki-Veress

  • Article
    | Open Access

    There is evidence that K3C60 can host a photo-induced superconducting state. Now, resonant excitation at low frequencies allows this phenomenon at room temperature and low pumping fluence.

    • E. Rowe
    • , B. Yuan
    •  & A. Cavalleri

  • Article |

    Many complex systems relax slowly towards equilibrium after a perturbation, without ever reaching it. Experiments with crumpled sheets now show that these relaxations involve intermittent avalanches of localized instabilities, whose slow-down leads to logarithmic aging.

    • Dor Shohat
    • , Yaniv Friedman
    •  & Yoav Lahini

  • News & Views |

    When a system is driven across a second-order phase transition, defects can form because it cannot respond quickly enough to the new conditions. The Kibble–Zurek mechanism explains this physics, and has now been invoked for Ising-type domains.

    • István Kézsmárki
    •  & Andrés Cano

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The Magnus effect refers to rotating objects developing a lift force when travelling through a fluid. It normally vanishes at microscopic length scales but now a very large Magnus effect is demonstrated for spinning colloids in viscoelastic fluids.

    • Xin Cao
    • , Debankur Das
    •  & Clemens Bechinger

  • News & Views |

    The liquid-crystal-like order of cells in epithelial tissues aids rearrangements, but there is disagreement over the dominant liquid crystal phase. Now, a unified approach reveals that two distinct symmetries dominate at different scales.

    • Daniel Beller

  • Article |

    The boson peak refers to an excess in the phonon density of states seen in three-dimensional amorphous materials. Helium-atom scattering experiments have now revealed a boson peak in a two-dimensional material, too, at a frequency similar to that of the bulk material.

    • Martin Tømterud
    • , Sabrina D. Eder
    •  & Bodil Holst

  • News & Views |

    The guiding of magnetic fields by soft ferromagnetic solids is well known and exploited in magnetic shielding applications. Now, ferroelectric nematic liquids are shown to analogously guide electric fields.

    • Alenka Mertelj

  • News & Views |

    An experimental approach enables the observation of the microscopic details of the relaxation of a highly equilibrated glass back to the liquid phase in real time. This points to a scenario where devitrification proceeds via localized seeds separated by macroscopic length scales.

    • Federico Caporaletti

  • Research Briefing |

    Drops sitting on an array of parallel fibres spontaneously move along the fibres when subject to an airflow perpendicular to the array. The drops show long-range aerodynamic interactions with their downstream and upstream neighbours, and these can catalyse drop coalescence and removal of drops from the fibres — relevant for applications such as fog harvesting and filtration.

  • Article |

    The wetting behaviour of drops attached to fibres is exploited in many applications including fog harvesting. The presence of a background air flow on fibre-attached drops on parallel fibres is now shown to lead to alignment, repulsion and coalescence processes.

    • Jessica L. Wilson
    • , Amir A. Pahlavan
    •  & Howard A. Stone

  • News & Views |

    The near-zero thermal expansion of Invar alloy Fe65Ni35 is technologically important but still unexplained. Measurements show that this phenomenon can be explained by the cancellation of magnetic and phonon contributions to the alloy’s entropy.

    • Ralf Röhlsberger

  • Article |

    The yielding transition in concentrated colloidal suspensions and emulsions lacks a universal description. A unified state diagram is now shown to underlie yielding for these materials, analogous to the van der Waals phase diagram for non-ideal gases.

    • Stefano Aime
    • , Domenico Truzzolillo
    •  & Luca Cipelletti

  • Article |

    The iron–nickel alloy Invar has an extremely small coefficient of thermal expansion that has been difficult to explain theoretically. A study of Invar under pressure now suggests that there is a cancellation of phonon and spin contributions to expansion.

    • S. H. Lohaus
    • , M. Heine
    •  & B. Fultz

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Colloidal aggregates are conventionally formed by particle aggregation under thermal fluctuation. Now the structure and mechanical properties of aggregates can be controlled by an active bath of swimming Escherichia coli.

    • Daniel Grober
    • , Ivan Palaia
    •  & Jérémie Palacci

  • Article |

    The ferroelectric uniaxial nematic liquid-crystal phase features a freely reorientable polarization field. When confined in microchannels and subjected to electric fields, this polarization is now found to align with the channels due to a superscreening effect.

    • Federico Caimi
    • , Giovanni Nava
    •  & Tommaso Bellini

  • News & Views |

    Amorphous gel structures are present in our everyday lives in the form of food, cosmetics, and biological systems. Experiments now show that their formation cannot be explained within the framework of equilibrium physics.

    • Michael Schmiedeberg

  • Article |

    Skyrmions are localized magnetic textures that form lattices in some magnetic materials. Neutron spin-echo measurements have now been able to observe topological effects on the low-energy collective excitations of a skrymion lattice.

    • Minoru Soda
    • , Edward M. Forgan
    •  & Hazuki Kawano-Furukawa

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Visualizing dynamical changes in glassy systems is challenging because of the time and length scales involved. Now, atomic force microscopy is shown to be a viable method for obtaining a spatio-temporal description of the relaxation of a glass.

    • Marta Ruiz-Ruiz
    • , Ana Vila-Costa
    •  & Javier Rodriguez-Viejo

  • Article |

    The Born–Oppenheimer approximation is the prevailing assumption for interpreting ultrafast electron dynamics in solids. Evidence now suggests that collisions between electrons and lattice not captured by this approximation play an important role.

    • Gilberto A. de la Peña Muñoz
    • , Alfredo A. Correa
    •  & Mariano Trigo

  • News & Views |

    A real qubit is not an isolated unitary quantum system but is subject to noise from its environment. An experiment has now turned this interaction on its head, controlling the environment using the qubit itself.

    • Bayan Karimi
    •  & Jukka P. Pekola

  • News & Views |

    Hydrides are promising for harnessing high-temperature superconductivity, albeit with the need of extreme pressures. New experimental protocols establish a magnetic route to detect and study superconductivity compatible with high-pressure devices.

    • Swee K. Goh
    • , Wei Zhang
    •  & King Yau Yip

  • Editorial |

    Exacerbated by the impacts of climate change and the recent energy crisis, concentrated efforts towards more sustainable research have become matters of urgency, in particular for large-scale accelerator complexes and light sources.

  • News & Views |

    Generating and controlling noncollinear spin textures is a promising route towards developing next-generation logic architectures beyond CMOS. Now, these spin textures can be engineered in twisted magnetic two-dimensional materials.

    • Bevin Huang

  • Article |

    Dynamic arrest in amorphous gels has so far been ascribed to glass transition. Now, experiments reveal a hierarchical structural ordering in dilute colloidal gels driven by the local potential energy, making this type of gel distinct from amorphous glasses.

    • Hideyo Tsurusawa
    •  & Hajime Tanaka

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