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The processes of metallic asperities moving across each other, which are decisive in most machinery, have been visualized at the atomic scale, revealing unexpected behaviour especially when under tensile stress.
The atomic-scale frictional processes between two metallic single-crystal asperities are visualized by combining in situ high-resolution TEM and AFM, elucidating diffusion-mediated low friction.
A seemingly disordered network of nanowires governed by thermodynamics is used as the physical ‘reservoir’ in a memristive implementation of reservoir computing to process spatiotemporal information.
The topological nature of the electronic structure of two-dimensional ferromagnetic SrRuO3 and its relationship to the anomalous Hall effect is explored through transport measurements, angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy and theoretical modelling.
A network of self-organized nanowires combined with a memristive read-out layer is used to demonstrate a hardware implementation of reservoir computing for recognition of spatio-temporal patterns and time-series prediction.
Micromagnets dispersed in a polymer matrix are used to realize a soft magnetoelastic generator with high magnetomechanical coupling factor, used for wearable and implantable power generation and sensing applications.
Application of electromotive force between molten iron–carbon and slag is shown to decarburize iron. Electrorefining decarburizes by direct interfacial electrochemical reaction, resulting in low solubilized oxygen in iron, even at low carbon concentration.
Research continues to showcase the versatility and application potential of perovskites, while our understanding of their structural and mechanical properties continues to improve.
Scanning tunnelling microscopy experiments reveal a chiral charge density wave order underpinning the anomalous Hall effect in kagome lattice materials. Under pressure this charge order is suppressed, while superconductivity gets a boost.
Amorphous silicon shows abnormal tension–compression asymmetry, with much higher tensile yield strength than compressive yield. This discovery advances our understanding of plasticity in this and other similar amorphous materials.
A nanosensor probe that combines a tumour-targeting peptide, a diagnostic reporter and an imaging contrast agent enables early diagnosis, precision imaging, disease stratification and downstream therapeutic response monitoring of metastatic cancer.
The non-collinear spin structure and nontrivial Berry curvature of Mn3Ge give rise to a long-range supercurrent in superconductor–Mn3Ge–superconductor lateral Josephson junctions.
Strain in thin films can increase piezoelectric properties, but crystallographic constraints may restrict the enhanced response to localized regions. Here, by combining strain and orientation engineering, a low-symmetry bridging phase of BiFeO3 with enhanced piezoresponse is stabilized uniformly throughout the film.
This Review provides an outlook on current understanding of the role of strain on the performance and stability of perovskite solar cells, as well as on tools to characterize strain in halide perovskite films and on strain management strategies.
The role of actin/tropomyosin filaments in the assembly of cell–substrate adhesions has been investigated and it is now shown by cryo-electron tomography that they are essential for adhesion assembly and also regulate mechanosensing, matrix remodelling and transformation of cells towards a cancer phenotype.
