Surfaces, interfaces and thin films articles within Nature Physics

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  • Article |

    The mechanism by which two-dimensional materials remain stable at a finite temperature is still under debate. Now, numerical calculations suggest that rotational symmetry is crucial in suppressing anharmonic effects that lead to structural instability.

    • Unai Aseginolaza
    • , Josu Diego
    •  & Ion Errea

  • News & Views |

    The integration of theory and experiment makes possible tracking the slow evolution of a photodoped Mott insulator to a distinct non-equilibrium metallic phase under the influence of electron-lattice coupling.

    • Denitsa R. Baykusheva

  • News & Views |

    The Kondo effect — the screening of an impurity spin by conduction electrons — is a fundamental many-body effect. However, recent experiments combined with simulations have caused a long-standing model system for the single-atom Kondo effect to fail.

    • Jörg Kröger
    •  & Takashi Uchihashi

  • Research Briefing |

    Local thermodynamic measurements of a twisted transition metal dichalcogenide heterostructure reveal competition between unconventional charge order and Hofstadter states. This results from the presence of both flat and dispersive electronic bands, whose energetic ordering can be experimentally tuned.

  • Article |

    Wrinkling of cell nuclei is associated with disease. During development, the nucleus behaves like a sheet of paper and the wrinkling amplitude can be manipulated without changing its pattern.

    • Jonathan A. Jackson
    • , Nicolas Romeo
    •  & Jasmin Imran Alsous

  • 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

  • Article |

    Large-system molecular dynamics simulations of films of glass-forming polymers reveal spatially long-range tails of interface-driven gradients of the glass transition temperature, suggestive of a combined local caging and long-range collective elasticity origin of relaxation and vitrification in glass-forming liquids.

    • Asieh Ghanekarade
    • , Anh D. Phan
    •  & David S. Simmons

  • News & Views |

    Phase-change processes, such as condensation or freezing, are known to compromise a surface’s water-repelling capability. It now turns out that tuning the freezing conditions can enable the spontaneous expulsion of water droplets.

    • Jonathan B. Boreyko

  • Article |

    Premelting refers to the formation of a thin liquid film on a crystal’s surface before it properly melts. Now, a similar mechanism is shown to occur before solid–solid transitions in colloidal crystals: the formation of a polymorphic crystalline layer.

    • Xipeng Wang
    • , Bo Li
    •  & Yilong Han

  • News & Views |

    Disturbances in the orientation of magnetization in a magnet can propagate as spin waves or magnons. A design that makes it possible to optically excite nanoscale spin waves offers a route to developing miniaturized spin-based devices.

    • Akashdeep Kamra
    •  & Lina G. Johnsen

  • Article |

    Adatoms on the surface of silicon can create two-dimensional superconductivity, the order parameter symmetry of which is currently not known. Now, evidence suggests it might be a topological chiral d-wave state.

    • F. Ming
    • , X. Wu
    •  & H. H. Weitering

  • News & Views |

    Making monolayer superconductors creates interesting effects, but often decreases the transition temperature compared to 3D materials. Instead, intercalating molecules into a layered superconductor tailors the superconductivity with fewer trade-offs.

    • Mark T. Edmonds

  • 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

  • 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 |

    Measurements of four different infinite-layer nickelates show that magnetic behaviour coexists with superconductivity. This is different from what is seen in cuprates, giving a strong distinction between the two classes of oxide superconductors.

    • Jennifer Fowlie
    • , Marios Hadjimichael
    •  & Andreas Suter

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The sliding of a water drop on a surface is traditionally described by taking flow within the drop and contact-line friction into account. Now, evidence shows that electric forces can also substantially affect water-on-surface sliding dynamics.

    • Xiaomei Li
    • , Pravash Bista
    •  & Hans-Jürgen Butt

  • Article |

    Macroscale patterns seen in biological systems such as animal coats or skin can be described by Turing’s reaction–diffusion theory. Now Turing patterns are shown to also exist in bismuth monolayers, an exemplary nanoscale atomic system.

    • Yuki Fuseya
    • , Hiroyasu Katsuno
    •  & Aharon Kapitulnik

  • Measure for Measure |

    Surface scientists love a good vacuum. The reason for this is captured by the work of Irving Langmuir and the little-known unit bearing his name, explains Daniel Payne.

    • Daniel T. Payne

  • Article |

    Inertial dynamics are observed in a ferromagnet. Specifically, a nutation is seen on top of the usual spin precession that has a lifetime on the order of 10 picoseconds.

    • Kumar Neeraj
    • , Nilesh Awari
    •  & Stefano Bonetti

  • Article |

    The authors investigate the role of spherical confinement and curvature-induced topological defects on the crystallization of charged colloids. They conclude that crystallization in spherical confinement is due to a combination of thermodynamics and kinetic pathways.

    • Yanshuang Chen
    • , Zhenwei Yao
    •  & Peng Tan

  • Letter |

    By incorporating a ferromagnetic layer in their superconductor–semiconductor nanowire hybrid device, Vaitiekėnas et al. show that zero-bias peaks—potential Majorana bound states—can be induced without an external magnetic field.

    • S. Vaitiekėnas
    • , Y. Liu
    •  & C. M. Marcus

  • Article |

    Symmetry breaking is essential for polarization of cells and generation of left–right body asymmetry. Here the authors investigate the arrangement of hair cells in zebrafish and show that mirror-symmetric patterns arise from a combination of biochemical and mechanical symmetry-breaking events.

    • A. Erzberger
    • , A. Jacobo
    •  & A. J. Hudspeth

  • Letter |

    Moiré engineering has rapidly gained currency as a means to manipulate electronic states of matter in van der Waals heterostructures. Now, the feat is achieved in epitaxially grown oxide heterostructures, thus opening up fresh opportunities for strongly correlated electronic systems.

    • Xinzhong Chen
    • , Xiaodong Fan
    •  & Changgan Zeng

  • Article |

    The electrons that contribute to the Mott insulator state in single-layer 1T-TaSe2 are shown to also have a rich variation in their orbital occupation. As more layers are added, both the insulating state and orbital texture weaken.

    • Yi Chen
    • , Wei Ruan
    •  & Michael F. Crommie

  • News & Views |

    A model fluid comprising rotating magnetic particles behaves according to the equations of hydrodynamics, but for a few key differences due to broken mirror symmetry. The resulting active chiral fluid is characterized by parity-odd Hall viscosity.

    • Alexander Abanov

  • Letter |

    The authors demonstrate that individual atoms on a surface can be detected and distinguished from each other with subångström resolution using the electron spin resonance.

    • Philip Willke
    • , Kai Yang
    •  & Christopher P. Lutz

  • Article |

    Ferromagnetism is observed at ferroelastic domain walls in strontium titanate and its heterostructures with other oxides. Applying strain can reverse the magnetism. This suggests the possibility of device engineering using domain walls.

    • D. V. Christensen
    • , Y. Frenkel
    •  & B. Kalisky

  • Article |

    Accurately capturing both microscopic and mesoscopic properties of fluid–gas interfaces is a long-standing challenge. Now, a microscopic theory of correlation functions that can be scaled up to explain mesoscopic surface tension phenomena is put forward.

    • A. O. Parry
    •  & C. Rascón

  • Letter |

    Surprising phenomena are known to occur when magnetic systems are confined to low-dimensional geometries. A resonant X-ray scattering study of NdNiO3 slabs reveals a crossover between different magnetic ground states as a function of thickness.

    • M. Hepting
    • , R. J. Green
    •  & E. Benckiser

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