Volume 21 Issue 1, January 2022

Dislocations engineered through plastic deformation are shown to enhance quantum fluctuations and superconductivity in SrTiO₃.

Integration of memristors in a chain of nano-constriction spintronic oscillators allows for individual control of oscillation frequencies and emerging synchronization patterns. The control of such synchronization could enable learning through association like neurons in the brain.

Slow, tunable dissociation of non-covalent host–guest complexes confers supramolecular polymer networks with excellent compressive strength and self-recovery.

Controlled nanophotonic fabrication in silicon carbide enables the quantum manipulation of nuclear spins with optical and spin coherence comparable to the pristine material, setting the ground for scalable integrated quantum networks.

A synthetic matrix recapitulates fundamental biological interactions of pancreatic cancer to facilitate the culture of mouse and human pancreatic organoids.

A double-layer borophene — a boron analogue of the double-layer graphene — has been synthesized, expanding the phase space and potential applications of two-dimensional boron.

Heterogeneous microscale contacts between molybdenum disulfide and graphene or hexagonal boron nitride layers demonstrate ultralow friction independent of their relative orientation with residual drag that originates from edge effects.

This Perspective discusses the interplay between magnetism and topology in condensed matter.

Ferrimagnets offer the combined advantages of both ferromagnets and antiferromagnets for spintronics applications. This Review surveys recent progress.

A borophene polymorph with two covalently bonded boron monolayers was synthesized, expanding the physical properties of borophene and filling the gap between monolayer borophene and icosahedron-based bulk boron.

Pneumatically actuated membranes made from a chiral nematic liquid crystalline elastomer supported by poly(dimethylsiloxane) layers are assembled into pixelated colour devices, where each individual pixel can be tuned throughout the entire visible spectrum.

MoS₂/graphite and MoS₂/h-BN interfaces are shown to have ultra-low friction coefficients, whereas edges and interface steps mainly contribute to the friction force.

Plastic deformation is shown to tune the quantum degrees of freedom in SrTiO₃.

The authors demonstrate ultrafast symmetry breaking by optically driven photocurrents.

Colour centres are a promising quantum information platform, but coherence degradation after integration in nanostructures has hindered scalability. Here, the authors show that waveguide-integrated V_Si centres in SiC maintain spin-optical coherences, enabling nuclear high-fidelity spin qubit operations.

Strain in thin films can increase piezoelectric properties, but crystallographic constraints may restrict the enhanced response to localized regions. Here, by combining strain and orientation engineering, a low-symmetry bridging phase of BiFeO₃ with enhanced piezoresponse is stabilized uniformly throughout the film.

This allows versatile non-volatile tuning of the mutual synchronization of chains of up to four oscillators and provides a path toward individual oscillator control in large oscillatory arrays.

Theoretical descriptors differentiate catalytic activity for oxygen evolution reaction by the strength of oxygen binding in the reactive intermediate created upon electron transfer. Picosecond optical spectra of the Ti-OH* population on doped SrTiO₃ are now shown to be ordered by surface hydroxylation.

Atomic electron tomography is used to determine the three-dimensional atomic structure of monatomic amorphous solids with liquid-like structure, which is characterized by the existence of pentagonal bipyramid networks with medium-range order.

Glass-like supramolecular polymer networks with high compressibility and fast self-recovery are fabricated using host–guest crosslinkers with slow dissociation kinetics.

A synthetic hydrogel has been developed to mimic the physicochemical properties of pancreatic tissue and is shown to support the culture of pancreatic cancer organoids, revealing the role of laminin–integrin interactions in their growth.

The role of actin/tropomyosin filaments in the assembly of cell–substrate adhesions has been investigated and it is now shown by cryo-electron tomography that they are essential for adhesion assembly and also regulate mechanosensing, matrix remodelling and transformation of cells towards a cancer phenotype.