Research articles

In situ tests show that all-inorganic lead halide perovskite micropillars can morph into distinct shapes without affecting their optoelectronic properties and bandgap, which provides insights into the plastic deformation of semiconductors and also shows their potential for manufacturing relevant devices.

The authors demonstrate that the electrostatic potential originating on the surface of twisted bilayer and multilayer hexagonal boron nitride can be used to generate a moiré potential modulation on adjacent semiconductor layers, enabling the possibility of controlling the properties of this adjacent layer.

Through the approach of paracrystallization under high-pressure and high-temperature conditions, exceptional toughening has been achieved in oxide glasses by enhancing their crystal-like medium-range order structure. This discovery offers possibilities for the design of more resilient glass materials.

In the non-collinear antiferromagnet Mn₃Sn, a spin–orbit torque makes the collective octupole moment and individual moments rotate in opposite directions, leading to a sign-reversed switching polarity compared with collinear magnets.

A graphene origami–kirigami technique offers an approach for growing intertwined graphene spirals with fixed twist angles, enabling the chirality of one-dimensional wrinkles to be converted into the twist angle of vertically stacked two-dimensional layers.

A van der Waals buffer layer of Sb₂O₃ enables the integration of high-κ dielectric layer with sub-1 nm equivalent oxide thickness on two-dimensional semiconductors, resulting in high performance of two-dimensional field-effect transistors.

Magnetic imaging reveals that a transport current flows in the interior of Cr-(Bi,Sb)₂Te₃ samples within the quantum anomalous Hall regime, contrary to the common assumption of current flow along the sample edge.

Current quantum dot emitters are limited to small-spectral-range colour tuning accompanied by intensity reduction. Electric-field-induced reversible emission colour switching without intensity loss can be achieved on a single-particle level in quantum dot molecules with two coupled emission centres.

The development of solid-state Li-metal batteries has been limited by Li plating and stripping rates and the formation of dendrites at relevant current densities. Single-phase mixed ion- and electron-conducting garnet with comparable Li-ion and electronic conductivities is now proposed to tackle these issues.

A gelatin–alginate hydrogel ink incorporating short gelatin fibres guides the self-organization of human cardiomyocytes into contractile tissues that can be 3D-printed into structures mimicking human organs.

The two-dimensional layered crystal structure of niobium oxide polymorph T-Nb₂O₅ exhibits fast Li-ion diffusion that is promising for energy storage applications. Epitaxial growth of single-crystalline T-Nb₂O₅ thin films with ionic transport channels oriented perpendicular to the surface are now demonstrated.

Photomechanical crystals are promising materials for converting photon energy into macroscopic work via reversible structural changes when exposed to light. Here the authors demonstrate highly ordered and compliant microcrystalline composites with a photomechanical performance exceeding that of single crystals.

The direct and facile growth of WS₂ and WSe₂ nanotubes with controllable chirality is realized using catalytic chemical vapour deposition with Au nanoparticles.

Carrier multiplication generates multiple excitons for each absorbed photon but is normally limited by fast phonon-assisted relaxation. Here the authors achieve a threefold enhancement in multiexciton yields in Mn-doped PbSe/CdSe quantum dots, due to very fast spin-exchange interactions between Mn ions and the quantum dots that outpace energy losses arising from phonon emission.

Organic electronic devices enhance biocompatibility, but have to rely on silicon-based technologies to improve limited speed and integration. This problem is overcome by creating a stand-alone, wireless, conformable, fully organic bioelectronic device with high electronic performance, scalability, stability and conformability in physiologic media.

Electrochemical doping is assumed to be limited by ion motion due to large mass in mixed ionic-electronic conductors. Here, the authors reveal in a typical polythiophene that electrochemical doping speeds are limited by poor hole transport at low doping levels, leading to much slower switching speeds than expected.

The authors report the emergence of a transient hexatic state during laser-induced transformation between two charge-density wave (CDW) phases in a thin film of the CDW material 1T-TaS₂.

The authors introduce a spin-optical laser based on a monolayer transition metal dichalcogenide coupled to a heterostructure microcavity supporting high-Q spin-valley resonances originating from photonic Rashba-type spin splitting of a bound state in the continuum.

Amorphous shear bands in crystalline materials are found to increase the toughness of brittle materials, in contrast to their traditional role as precursors to fracture. Criteria for this toughening have been identified.

Extrinsic impurities may trap electrons or holes leading to imbalanced charge transport in wide band gap organic semiconductors. Here the authors propose a bottom-up design strategy by spatially separating HOMO and LUMO orbitals to avoid charge trapping, enhancing charge transport by orders of magnitude.