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Load partitioning to grains during deformation of a polycrystalline material is affected by the presence of twins. Here, synchrotron diffraction is used to study 1300 twin-parent grains, revealing that stress is higher in twins than in the parent grain during the early stages of plastic deformation.
The use of photovoltaic devices for energy harvesting in real-world applications requires that they are conformable to non-flat surfaces. Here, a micro-scale concentrator module shows 15.4% outdoor conversion efficiency and can stretch over curved 3D surfaces.
Flexible sensors that respond to chemical stimuli in the body are promising for personal health monitoring. Here, a flexible immunosensor is printed onto a 1 μm-thick film, which can detect an immunological protein marker.
Elemental tellurium is a natural p-type semiconductor with a chiral structure and spin-polarized Fermi surface. Here, the authors show that the pressure-induced topological change of the Fermi surface at 17 kbar triggers an Anderson-Mott insulator-to-metal transition.
Hyperbolic materials have unique optical properties such as negative refraction and highly directional polaritons, relevant in super-resolution imaging. Here, the topological insulator Bi2Se3 is shown to host hyperbolic edge-confined exciton polaritons that can be steered via engineered edge defects.
Biomass pellets are a promising renewable source of fuel, and are increasingly transported around the globe. Here, it is found that the combined effect of heat and humidity during pellet storage causes inclusion, pore and crack growth, degrading the microstructure.
The poor environmental stability of lead halide perovskites limits their performance in solar cells. Here, a CuSCN nanoplateletes/p-type semiconducting polymer composite layer enables the stable performance of a solar cell for 28 days in high-moisture conditions, attributed to water splitting.
Metal organic frameworks (MOFs) are promising for CO2 capture. Here, the Mg2(dobpdc) MOF is synthesized as micron-sized beads with a silane coating resulting in > 11 wt% CO2 absorption, which is retained after three days in a humid environment at 140 °C.
Chiral mechanical metamaterials enable unusual effects, such as coupling between strain and twist. Here, manufactured microstructured samples with >105 chiral unit cells exhibit large characteristic lengths, in agreement with analytical and numerical modelling and micropolar continuum elasticity.
