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Using core–shell particles represents an effective design strategy for improving the performance of noble metal catalysts, but their stabilities can suffer during reactions. Atomically thin Pt shells are shown to stabilize titanium tungsten carbide cores, even at highly oxidizing potentials.
The ultrafast response of a pyroelectric sensor with near-infrared responsivity is demonstrated by combining a pyroelectric thermal detector with wavelength-selective nanoparticle absorbers.
Platinum catalysts are widely used for oxygen reduction reactions in electrochemical devices but scalability is restricted by scarcity, cost and vulnerability to poisoning. Zirconium nitride nanoparticles now exhibit an oxygen reduction performance with similar activity to that of Pt on carbon.
A remarkably low critical current is found to reorient the magnetic order in a magnetically intercalated transition metal dichalcogenide, suggesting this class of materials could form a basis for antiferromagnetic spintronics.
Pressure-induced changes in the magnetic order of bilayer and trilayer van der Waals crystals are revealed and attributed to changes in the stacking arrangement.
Pressure-induced changes in the magnetic order of atomically thin van der Waals crystals are revealed and attributed to changes in the stacking arrangement.
The kinetics and thermodynamics of the nucleation of magnetite crystals from primary particles are shown to be described by colloidal assembly theory, allowing for predictions of crystal sizes to be made.
Zeolites are industrially useful catalysts, but their synthesis is poorly understood and many predicted structures remain unsynthesized. Machine learning and graph theory are used respectively to mine the literature on zeolite transformations and to predict similar zeolite pairs that may easily be transformed into each other.
Water clusters induce hole traps in organic semiconductor thin films. Detrimental effects of hole and electron traps on charge transport can be avoided by using materials with ionization energy and electron affinity within an energy window of 2.4 eV.
Plasmonic array nanolasers with Yb3+/Er3+-co-doped upconverting nanoparticles exhibit directional single-mode emission, with ultra-stable output over hours and with ultralow-threshold under continuous-wave pumping.
Metallic transition metal dichalcogenides are promising catalysts for hydrogen evolution reactions but their performances are still lower than industrial Pt and Ir electrolysers. The metallic 2H phase of niobium disulfide now exhibits enhanced current densities versus a reversible hydrogen electrode.
A magnetic texture is used to synthetically induce a large spin–orbit interaction in a carbon nanotube, and signatures of Majorana zero modes—promising for quantum computing applications—are observed.
Due to the crystal symmetry of single-layer transition metal dichalcogenides and the fact that the conduction and valence band edges are at the zone-edge K points, the 2p exciton states are split. A two-colour pump–probe scheme is used to drive the 1s–2p exciton transition, and then probe the changes in absorption near the spectral position of the 1s line to measure the splitting energy.
Rewritable surface charge density gradients enable the direct, high-speed and long-distance transport of droplets on distinct surfaces without the need of additional energy input.
A ferroelectric material is used to switch the uniaxial magnetic anisotropy of an antiferromagnet, with implications for antiferromagnetic spintronics.