Articles in 2023

The antiferromagnetic material haematite, named for its blood-red colour, hosts swirling spin vortices termed merons. The rotation sense of such antiferromagnetic vortices has now been imaged in real space.

Inspired by the observed coherent interface between hexagonal α-Fe₂O₃ and tetragonal fluorine-doped SnO₂, an oxygen sublattice-matching paradigm is proposed to grow textured films on lattice-mismatched substrates. Through assessing the similarity of Voronoi cells for sublattices, this approach offers opportunities to synthesize (semi)coherent heterostructures and textured films.

An important but difficult separation, the removal of carbon monoxide from humid gas mixtures comprising oxygen, nitrogen and hydrocarbons, is addressed by exploiting Cu(I) coordination chemistry and framework flexibility.

Engineered ligand shells on gold nanoclusters utilizing molecular motion improve the thermal conductance between the cluster and the solvent, increasing thermal stability and enhancing performance in the photothermal treatment of cancerous tumours.

Incorporating additives that contain hydrogen-bonding nanochannels creates nanoconfined polymer gels that are highly stretchable, elastic and insensitive to notch propagation.

Processible centimetre-scale porous glasses using zeolitic imidazolate framework (ZIF) materials are developed, while fine-tuning of the processing conditions allows control of pore size and molecular sieving properties.

Orthogonally twisted CrSBr ferromagnetic monolayers with in-plane Ising anisotropies are found to exhibit multistep magnetoresistance switching with a magnetic hysteresis opening. This work emphasizes the role of spin dimensionality in two-dimensional magnets, and the potential of orthogonal and large-twist-angle van der Waals magnets.

Elastic microphase separation controls the characteristic mesoscopic length scale of bulk bicontinuous materials.

Porosity of zeolitic imidazolate frameworks can be preserved beyond glass transition and melt processing. Here centimetre-scale porous glasses are demonstrated, whereas liquid processing enables fine-tuning of the size of the gas-transporting channels for molecular sieving.

An all-electric switch of the persistent electron swirl in a quantum anomalous Hall state enables researchers to flip the electronic chirality of this quantum state.

Using an electrochemical continuous flow cell, nitrogen reduction to ammonia is rigorously demonstrated through a calcium-mediated approach.

By forming a heterostructure interface, and by judicious choice of crystallographic orientation, piezoelectrics are developed that show expansion or contraction along all axes on application of an electric field.

Hybrid organic–inorganic perovskite materials have promise as the photovoltaic technology of the future. A method for spectroscopic optical control reveals how the structural dynamics and vibrations of a perovskite’s organic cations affect the electronic performance of working photovoltaic devices.

Depositing textured functional materials on transparent conducting oxides remains a challenge. We demonstrate the formation of a coherent interface between a set of functional oxides and fluorine-doped-tin-oxide-based transparent conducting oxide substrate despite the lattice mismatch, owing to dimensional and chemical matching of oxygen sublattices at the interface.

Oxidation can degrade the properties and functionality of three-dimensional bulk metallic glasses. However, the formation of percolating oxide networks in metallic glass nanotubes or nanosheets can induce interesting properties, such as a recoverable strain of 10–20% and elastic modulus of 20–30 GPa, which are rarely observed in their bulk counterparts.

Oxidation normally deteriorates the mechanical properties of metals. But it is now shown that the formation of a percolating oxide network in metallic glass nanotubes can result in an unprecedented superelasticity of 14% at room temperature.

Diamond quantum magnetometry is utilized to directly read the vorticity of antiferromagnetic spin textures through coupled multi-polar emergent magnetic charge distributions.