News & Views

Hybridized electron or hole states across semiconducting van der Waals monolayers in heterotrilayer systems enable the emergence of quadrupolar excitons. Quadrupolar excitons, unlike their dipolar counterparts, have a tunable static dipole moment that responds nonlinearly under an applied electric field.

Heat treatment can transform some moiré superlattices into fully commensurate bilayers, where atoms in opposite layers align perfectly with each other. This structural transformation gives rise to markedly brighter interlayer excitons.

By inserting an epitaxial in-plane buffer layer of Bi₅FeTi₃O₁₅, an artificial flux closure architecture enables ferroelectric polarization from a single unit cell of BaTiO₃ or BiFeO₃.

Three protein interaction surfaces are computationally designed into one protein subunit to enable their accurate assembly into three-dimensional crystals with user-specified lattice architectures.

The monolithic 3D integration of wafer-free all-2D-materials-based electronics can produce an AI processor.

Chiral single-photon emitters are desirable, versatile tools for quantum information processing. Exploiting proximity to a strain-induced local magnetic field in the van der Waals antiferromagnet NiPS₃ enables the emission of high-purity chiral single photons from monolayer WSe₂ at zero external magnetic field.

An approach to analyse the deformation behaviour of polymer networks provides an enhanced set of structural information, improving our understanding of the elasticity of soft materials.

Terahertz photoconductivity measurements coupled with theoretical modelling reveals that thermal transient excitations to more delocalized states enhances hole mobility in organic molecular semiconductors.

Lymphatic vessels within and near to tumours facilitate nanoparticle transport out of tumours, with ramifications in the design and implementation of next-generation clinical cancer nanomedicines.

By stacking few-layer WSe₂ in proximity to twisted double bilayer graphene, researchers report solid evidence of superconductivity.

Non-equilibrium thermodynamics describes activity-stabilized mixed states in complex active-matter systems.

Lattices of micrometre-sized metamaterials embedded in thermoresponsive hydrogels deform upon heating to reveal encrypted images from a blank gel canvas.

An additively manufactured AlSi10Mg alloy shows high fatigue strength, even close to its tensile strength, for micro-sized samples. The fine cells in its inherent three-dimensional network are considered as cages to limit damage accumulation.

Quantum dots couple to form artificial molecules that allow for variable colour emission in response to an electric field.

Remotely powered vertical electrochemical transistors are demonstrated to track subtle nerve-cell activity even when the transistor core is fully shielded from the biological environment.

Oxide glasses can be intrinsically toughened by forming crystal-like, medium-range order clusters, which transform inversely to the amorphous state under stress, exciting multiple shear bands for plastic deformation.