Materials science articles within Nature Physics

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  • Article |

    Hexagonal boron nitride is a common component of 2D heterostructures. Defects implanted in boron nitride crystals can be used to perform spatially resolved sensing of properties, including temperature, magnetism and current.

    • A. J. Healey
    • , S. C. Scholten
    •  & J.-P. Tetienne

  • Letter
    | Open Access

    The notion of chirality in dynamical systems with broken spatial symmetry but preserved time inversion symmetry has led to the concept of truly chiral phonons. These have now been observed in bulk HgS using circularly polarized Raman spectroscopy.

    • Kyosuke Ishito
    • , Huiling Mao
    •  & Takuya Satoh

  • Article |

    The transition from a glassy to a liquid phase is normally assumed to take place cooperatively across the whole material. But now, experiments show that, under certain conditions, isolated regions of liquid can form in the glassy matrix first.

    • Ana Vila-Costa
    • , Marta Gonzalez-Silveira
    •  & Javier Rodriguez-Viejo

  • Letter |

    The superconducting critical temperature of monolayer materials is often lower than their bulk counterparts. Now, intercalation is shown to induce two-dimensional superconducting properties while maintaining the bulk critical temperature.

    • Haoxiong Zhang
    • , Awabaikeli Rousuli
    •  & Shuyun Zhou

  • News & Views |

    Fractional charges are one of the hallmarks of topological matter and the building blocks of various topological devices. Now, there are indications that their fingerprint in terms of electrical noise is less obvious, but more universal, than expected.

    • Stefano Roddaro

  • News & Views |

    Laser light is usually limited to the same wavelength range as the spontaneous emission of the active material. A judicious choice of dielectric coatings on the cavity has now enabled laser emission far beyond the spectral range of the gain medium.

    • Alessandra Toncelli

  • Letter |

    As laser action emerges from fluorescence, its emission wavelength lies within the fluorescence spectrum. Exploiting multiphonon processes can take the laser emission far beyond the spectral limits defined by a material’s intrinsic fluorescence.

    • Fei Liang
    • , Cheng He
    •  & Yan-Feng Chen

  • Perspective |

    High-resolution imaging methods have been instrumental in advancing our understanding of the structure of materials. To move microscopy and tomography methods forwards, approaches to reassess macroscopic concepts such as symmetry are needed.

    • Sergei V. Kalinin
    • , Ayana Ghosh
    •  & Maxim Ziatdinov

  • Article |

    Wrinkling happens because of mechanical instabilities arising from length mismatches. A theory now describes wrinkling in confined elastic shells and is expected to be relevant for the controlled design of complex wrinkle patterns.

    • Ian Tobasco
    • , Yousra Timounay
    •  & Eleni Katifori

  • News & Views |

    Computer simulations have revealed the topological nature of the liquid–liquid phase transition in colloidal water. This finding might lead to an experimental observation of this topological transition with colloids as building blocks.

    • Camille Scalliet

  • Letter |

    The isotropy of a spherical droplet’s surface causes uniform distribution of adsorbed molecules. However, wrapping the droplet by a crystalline monolayer induces structural defects, enabling temperature-controllable positioning of adsorbates.

    • Subhomoy Das
    • , Alexander V. Butenko
    •  & Eli Sloutskin

  • Letter |

    The anomalous Hall effect can signify that a material has a spontaneous magnetic order. Now, twisted bilayer graphene shows this effect at half filling, suggesting that the ground state is valley-polarized.

    • Chun-Chih Tseng
    • , Xuetao Ma
    •  & Matthew Yankowitz

  • Letter |

    Stacking monolayer WS2 on top of bilayer WSe2 creates conditions where electrons and holes can coexist in the structure. Their Coulomb interaction allows them to form bound pairs and hence an excitonic insulator state.

    • Dongxue Chen
    • , Zhen Lian
    •  & Su-Fei Shi

  • Article |

    Cilia are composed of cytoskeletal filaments and molecular motors and are characterized by a wave-like motion. Here the authors show that this motion is reconstituted in vitro from the self-assembly of polymerizing actin filaments and myosin motors.

    • Marie Pochitaloff
    • , Martin Miranda
    •  & Pascal Martin

  • Letter |

    Unconventional superconductivity is often associated with the presence of other kinds of electronic order. Observations of charge order in infinite-layer nickelate superconductors show that they fit this pattern.

    • Matteo Rossi
    • , Motoki Osada
    •  & Wei-Sheng Lee

  • News & Views |

    Colloidal random lasers are hard to design and control. Combining optically controlled micro-heaters with thermophilic particles attracted by them leads to microlasers with programmable and reversible patterns.

    • Neda Ghofraniha

  • Article |

    Experiments inspired by the behaviour of active matter show that an external optical stimulus can spatially reconfigure colloidal random lasers and continuously tune their lasing threshold.

    • Manish Trivedi
    • , Dhruv Saxena
    •  & Giorgio Volpe

  • Editorial |

    Glass, now celebrated with a dedicated International Year, continues to fascinate.

  • News & Views |

    Advances in precision lithography and measurement have made it possible to observe and control the magnetic phase transition in kagome artificial spin ice, which could lead to new technological devices.

    • Susan Kempinger

  • News & Views |

    Two-dimensional model glasses exhibit characteristics in their low-frequency vibrational density of states that can be traced to the quasilocalized dynamics of string-like objects. This finding provides an explanation for a universal feature of glasses known as the boson peak.

    • Lothar Wondraczek

  • Article |

    The relation between physical properties and structure in amorphous materials is poorly understood. Simulations now show that vibrations of string-like dynamical defects likely govern the low-temperature dynamics in these systems.

    • Yuan-Chao Hu
    •  & Hajime Tanaka

  • News & Views |

    Analysis of the anisotropy of the magnetic excitations in the nematic state of an iron-based superconductor suggests that this phase is driven primarily by spin fluctuations.

    • Laura Fanfarillo

  • Article |

    The concept of quasi-symmetry—a perturbatively small deviation from exact symmetry—is introduced and leads to topological materials with strong resilience to perturbations.

    • Chunyu Guo
    • , Lunhui Hu
    •  & Philip J. W. Moll

  • News & Views |

    An experimental realization of an artificial spin glass is demonstrated, with an arrangement of Ising-type permalloy nanomagnets mimicking the structure of artificial spin ice — and a particular type of neural network.

    • Denys Makarov

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Electrons in PdCoO2 can travel a long way before being scattered, and their band structure is such that they can travel in only one of three directions. As a result, the current flow through this nanoscale conductor can be very efficient.

    • Maja D. Bachmann
    • , Aaron L. Sharpe
    •  & Philip J. W. Moll

  • News & Views |

    Charge carriers in an engineered bilayer Mott insulator are predicted to form tightly bound, mobile pairs, glued together by string excitations of the antiferromagnetic order — a scenario that can be tested with quantum gas microscopy experiments.

    • Martin Gärttner
    •  & Markus Garst

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Studies of unconventional pairing mechanisms in cold atoms require ultralow temperatures. Large-scale numerics show that certain bilayer models allow for deeply bound and highly mobile pairs of charges at more accessible temperatures.

    • Annabelle Bohrdt
    • , Lukas Homeier
    •  & Fabian Grusdt

  • Article |

    Artificial spin ice formed of nanomagnets arranged on a lattice mimics frustrated magnetism seen in condensed matter. By controlling magnetic interactions, theoretically predicted phase transitions are now observed in artificial kagome-lattice spin ice.

    • Kevin Hofhuis
    • , Sandra Helen Skjærvø
    •  & Laura Jane Heyderman

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Many organelles in the cell are not encapsulated in a membrane—they are liquid-like domains formed through phase separation. The liquid-like nature of such domains leads to adhesive interactions between the cytoskeleton filaments and organelles.

    • Thomas J. Böddeker
    • , Kathryn A. Rosowski
    •  & Eric R. Dufresne

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The charge transport mechanism in MXenes—an emerging class of layered materials—is not yet fully understood. A combination of terahertz spectroscopy and transport measurements shows that the formation of large polarons play a crucial role.

    • Wenhao Zheng
    • , Boya Sun
    •  & Mischa Bonn

  • News & Views |

    The origin of a well-known feature in relaxation data seen in many glass-forming materials has now — possibly — been resolved by means of computer simulations.

    • Reiner Zorn

  • Article |

    Whether and when a material deforms elastically or plastically depends on its microstructure. Experiments on two-dimensional colloidal systems show that in disordered materials, packing density, stress and a microstructure-related entropy govern deformations.

    • K. L. Galloway
    • , E. G. Teich
    •  & P. E. Arratia

  • Article |

    The dynamic relaxation spectrum of a supercooled liquid is asymmetric near the glass transition. Overcoming the difficulty of accessing low temperatures and long timescales, simulations now attribute this feature to dynamic facilitation.

    • Benjamin Guiselin
    • , Camille Scalliet
    •  & Ludovic Berthier

  • News & Views |

    Hopes for a topological spin liquid phase in ruthenium trichloride have been previously raised by evidence of Majorana modes at the material’s edges. Transport and bulk thermodynamic measurements now strengthen the case for Majorana fermions.

    • Anja U. B. Wolter
    •  & Christian Hess

  • Letter
    | Open Access

    Earlier measurements of quantized heat transport in the spin liquid candidate α-RuCl3 agreed with the predictions of Majorana edge modes. Support for this interpretation now comes from the observations of quantization across a large parameter range.

    • J. A. N. Bruin
    • , R. R. Claus
    •  & H. Takagi

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