News & Views in 2019

Highly stable and active Pt–Sn sub-nanometre clusters are located in sinusoidal zeolite channels, leading to improved and more stable propane dehydrogenation catalysts.

Measuring the 1s–2p splitting of direct and indirect excitons in van der Waals heterostructures allows their binding energy and dynamics to be determined.

An intermediate affinity state of integrin α_IIBβ₃ has been identified to be a key player in platelet mechanosignalling.

Controlled Pt loading on TiO₂ nanoparticles enables single-site catalysts. With this, the coordination environment and catalytic activity can be obtained, allowing extraction of structure-function information.

The chiral magnetic exchange interaction, or Dzyaloshinskii–Moriya interaction, is found to propagate through dozens of atomic layers and also to be present in inhomogeneous amorphous alloys. These discoveries extend the parameter space available for realizing magnetic structures with chiral character.

A comprehensive chemical space of potential inorganic ternary metal nitrides has been explored by computational methods as a guideline for their experimental synthesis and discovery.

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.

The polarity of charge carriers — positive or negative — is found to depend on the direction from which you look.

Over-expression of a transcriptional factor, Alx3, has been shown to revitalize the regenerative capacity of adult progenitor cells to promote enhanced stromal vascularization and formation of parenchymal dental pulp tissue in vivo.

An oxygen-free method of growing transition metal selenides leads to atomically thin films with unprecedented robustness against the most hostile conditions.

By chemically treating wood it is possible to fabricate a nanofluidic device for generating electricity from the harvesting of ubiquitous low-grade heat.

A tender X-ray momentum-resolved spectroscopy for probing elementary excitations in 4d quantum materials is reported and used to measure dispersive spin excitations in a ruthenate microcrystal.

A magnetic-field-dependent spectroscopy study on single perovskite nanocrystals reveals the spectral signatures of an exciton dark state below the bright triplet states.

Using electric field gating, researchers demonstrate switching from a single- to a multi-condensate superconducting state at an oxide-based interface, and show that this transition leads to an overall weakening of the superconductivity.

Coherent shaping of matter waves in temporal and spatial domains by photon-induced near fields opens up new possibilities for the quantum control of matter.

By measuring the photocurrent from illuminated Weyl semimetals, an optical signature of topological properties arising from Weyl fermions has been revealed, highlighting nonlinear optical effects and applications of Weyl semimetals.