Microscopy articles within Nature Materials

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  • News & Views |

    Cancer cells adjust the composition of their glycocalyx to increase its thickness and create a physical barrier that shields them from immune recognition and engagement.

    • Edward N. Schmidt
    •  & Matthew S. Macauley

  • Feature |

    Marc Legros, Frédéric Mompiou and Daniel Caillard discuss the different aspects that influence the reproducibility and reliability of characterizations performed using in situ mechanical tests in transmission electron microscopes.

    • Marc Legros
    • , Frédéric Mompiou
    •  & Daniel Caillard

  • Article |

    The authors combine laser excitation and scanning tunnelling spectroscopy to visualize the electron and hole distributions in photoexcited moiré excitons in twisted bilayer WS2. This photocurrent tunnelling microscopy approach enables the study of photoexcited non-equilibrium moiré phenomena at atomic scales.

    • Hongyuan Li
    • , Ziyu Xiang
    •  & Feng Wang

  • Article |

    In situ tests show that all-inorganic lead halide perovskite micropillars can morph into distinct shapes without affecting their optoelectronic properties and bandgap, which provides insights into the plastic deformation of semiconductors and also shows their potential for manufacturing relevant devices.

    • Xiaocui Li
    • , You Meng
    •  & Yang Lu

  • Comment |

    In many concentrated alloys of current interest, the observation of diffuse superlattice intensities by transmission electron microscopy has been attributed to chemical short-range order. We briefly review these findings and comment on the plausibility of widespread interpretations, noting the absence of expected peaks, conflicts with theoretical predictions, and the possibility of alternative explanations.

    • Flynn Walsh
    • , Mingwei Zhang
    •  & Mark Asta

  • News & Views |

    Local vibrational modes at substitutional impurities in monolayer graphene are resolved with a sensitivity at the chemical bonding level, revealing the impacts of different chemical configurations and mass of impurity atoms on the defect-perturbed vibrational properties.

    • Xingxu Yan

  • Article |

    Vibrational spectroscopy now allows for the exploration of lattice vibrational properties at the chemical-bond level, revealing the impact of chemical-bonding configurations and atomic mass on local phonon modes in graphene with a new level of sensitivity.

    • Mingquan Xu
    • , De-Liang Bao
    •  & Wu Zhou

  • Article |

    On-demand electron wavefront shaping is desirable for applications from nanolithography to imaging. Here, the authors present tunable photon-induced spatial modulation of electrons through their interaction with externally controlled surface plasmon polaritons.

    • Shai Tsesses
    • , Raphael Dahan
    •  & Ido Kaminer

  • News & Views |

    Revealing the molecular orientations of anisotropic materials is desired in materials science and soft-matter physics. Now, an optical diffraction tomographic approach enables the direct reconstruction of dielectric tensors of anisotropic structures in three dimensions.

    • Anne Sentenac
    • , Guillaume Maire
    •  & Patrick C. Chaumet

  • News & Views |

    Imaging the magnetic structure in non-centrosymmetric nanoparticles reveals the emergence of a new spin texture, the skyrmionic vortex, stabilized through a chiral geometric frustration.

    • Shawn David Pollard

  • Article |

    Measuring three-dimensional dielectric tensors is desired for applications in material and soft matter physics. Here, the authors use a tomographic approach and inversely solve the vectorial wave equation to directly reconstruct dielectric tensors of anisotropic structures.

    • Seungwoo Shin
    • , Jonghee Eun
    •  & YongKeun Park

  • News & Views |

    Using atomic-resolution electron microscopy to observe ion-exchange processes in atomically thin layered and restacked clays, substantially larger ion diffusion constants and moiré effects on ion dynamics are seen.

    • Hui Zhang
    •  & Benjamin Gilbert

  • Article |

    Layered clays are of interest for membranes and many other applications but their ion-exchange dynamics remain unexplored in atomically thin materials. Here, using electron microscopy, it is found that the ion diffusion for few-layer two-dimensional clays approaches that of free water and that superlattice cation islands can form in twisted and restacked materials.

    • Yi-Chao Zou
    • , Lucas Mogg
    •  & Sarah J. Haigh

  • News & Views |

    Four-dimensional scanning transmission electron microscopy is demonstrated to be a powerful technique for interrogating local strain of twisted graphene bilayers, revealing a two-regime lattice reconstruction process below the ‘magic’ angle.

    • S. J. Haigh
    •  & R. Gorbachev

  • News & Views |

    Direct experimental observations reveal that grain boundaries in aluminium oxide migrate by a chain of structural phase transformations within the boundary core.

    • Y. Mishin

  • Article |

    Complete strain tensor fields of twisted bilayer graphene are quantitatively mapped, revealing two-regime reconstruction mechanics depending on twist angle.

    • Nathanael P. Kazmierczak
    • , Madeline Van Winkle
    •  & D. Kwabena Bediako

  • Article |

    The atomic process of grain boundary migration has been directly observed by scanning transmission electron microscopy, revealing transformations between different stable or metastable grain boundary structures.

    • Jiake Wei
    • , Bin Feng
    •  & Yuichi Ikuhara

  • Article |

    Radiation-induced segregation is widely observed in metals. Here it is discovered that radiation-induced segregation also occurs in a ceramic, with carbon atoms in silicon carbide segregating to the grain boundaries under irradiation.

    • Xing Wang
    • , Hongliang Zhang
    •  & Izabela Szlufarska

  • News & Views |

    Scanning atomic electron tomography measurements reveal the 3D local structure around single dopant atoms in 2D transition metal dichalcogenides, providing essential information to investigate and predict their electronic properties.

    • Angus I. Kirkland

  • News & Views |

    Bending of few-layer graphene leads to interlayer slip, and slipping lowers the bending stiffness. Beyond a critical bending angle, the graphene layers bend like a stack of paper, with a state of superlubricity for interlayer slip.

    • Rui Huang

  • Article |

    Anticancer drugs such as Taxol can affect microtubule dynamics and organization in cells. Direct visualization of the action of such drugs has shown that they can trigger local and cooperative changes in microtubule lattice and induce formation of stable microtubule regions that promote rescues.

    • Ankit Rai
    • , Tianyang Liu
    •  & Anna Akhmanova

  • News & Views |

    Thousands of electron diffraction patterns, collected stepwise by scanning transmission electron microscopy, are synchronized and mined to provide unprecedented maps of the nanostructure of ordered domains in organic electronics films.

    • Gitti L. Frey
    •  & Yaron Kauffmann

  • News & Views |

    Quantitative atomic-scale images of electric potentials at surfaces have now been obtained with a non-contact atomic force microscope by functionalizing the tip as a quantum dot sensor.

    • Mats Persson

  • News & Views |

    A crystal structure with one-dimensional order is identified in oxide ceramics, which is distinguished from the well-known categories of solid structures and potentially provides unexpected properties.

    • Eric A. Stach

  • Letter |

    An ordered structure that has only translational periodicity in one direction— unlike the known solid categories of crystal, quasicrystal and amorphous— is discovered in MgO and Nd2O3 ceramics.

    • Deqiang Yin
    • , Chunlin Chen
    •  & Yuichi Ikuhara

  • News & Views |

    Although precipitates’ compositions are theoretically determined by thermodynamics, their formation kinetics can also lead to composition variations that allow further structural evolution, making the precipitation path more complex.

    • Emmanuel Clouet

  • Article |

    Atomic-scale spinodal decomposition enabled diffusion was observed within ordered nanoprecipitates that have structural imperfections, resulting from dynamic interaction of Gibbs energy, activation energy of atomic jumps and phase ordering in multicomponent alloys.

    • Angelina Orthacker
    • , Georg Haberfehlner
    •  & Gerald Kothleitner

  • News & Views |

    Line defects in two-dimensional borophene can self-assemble into new crystalline phases, blurring the distinctions between perfect and defective crystal.

    • Arkady V. Krasheninnikov

  • Letter |

    In situ transmission electron microscopy observations reveal atomistic mechanism of water-vapour-enhanced oxidation of Ni–Cr alloys. Protons derived from water promote vacancy formation, migration and clustering.

    • Langli Luo
    • , Mao Su
    •  & Chongmin Wang

  • News & Views |

    The structure of the platelet defect in diamond has been determined by transmission electron microscopy, distinguishing the best-matched atomic model that settles a long-standing debate.

    • Jannik Meyer

  • Article |

    In situ transmission electron microscopy combined with theory modelling reveals that surface segregation in CuAu solid solution generates misfit dislocations, providing atomistic mechanisms of dislocation nucleation and dynamics at heterointerfaces.

    • Lianfeng Zou
    • , Chaoming Yang
    •  & Guangwen Zhou

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