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Stochastic orbital dynamics of individually coupled Co atoms on black phosphorus enables the realization of a Boltzmann machine capable of self-adaption.
High efficiency, coherence and indistinguishability are key requirements for the application of single-photon sources for quantum technologies, but hard to achieve concurrently. A gated quantum dot in an open, tunable microcavity now can create single photons on-demand with an end-to-end efficiency of 57%, preserving coherence over microsecond-long trains of single photons.
Broken inversion symmetry in a type-II Weyl semimetal TaIrTe4 enables observation of the room-temperature nonlinear Hall effect as well as wireless radiofrequency rectification.
Increasing the fatigue life of shape memory alloys often compromises other mechanical properties such as yield strength and plastic deformation behaviour. Introducing a mixed nanostructure of crystalline and amorphous phases can enable superelasticity in NiTi micropillars with recoverable strain of 4.3%, yield strength of 2.3 GPa and 108 reversible-phase transition cycles under a stress of 1.8 GPa.
Spin–orbit torque in heavy metal/ferromagnet heterostructures is promising for all-electric control of magnetic memory, but has so far required an additional symmetry breaking in the design to switch perpendicular magnetization. Instead, a low symmetry at the interface can give rise to out-of-plane spin torque and switch the magnetization deterministically.
Typically, quasiparticles are injected into superconductors at energies comparable to the pairing energy in order to gain insights into quasiparticle dynamics. Tunnelling spectroscopy of a mesoscopic superconductor under high electric field now provides insights into a regime where electrons impinge with 106 times the pairing energy.
Hybrid quantum optomechanical systems interface a single two-level system with a macroscopic mechanical degree of freedom. In a microwire with a single embedded semiconductor quantum dot, not only can the wire vibration modulate the excitonic transition energy, but the optical drive of the quantum dot can also induce motion in the wire.
Many-body interactions amongst interlayer excitons in a WSe2/MoSe2 heterobilayer give rise to a strong and tunable effective magnetic field enabling the control of the valley pseudospin.
A hierarchically designed polymer nanofibre-based film produced by a scalable electrospinning process enables selective mid-infrared emission and effective sunlight reflection, and thus realizes an excellent all-day radiative cooling performance.
A combination of atomistic imaging and spectroscopy reveals that metal substitution into a sulfur vacancy is the underlying mechanism for resistive switching in transition metal dichalcogenide monolayers.
An energy transduction mechanism across metal/semiconductor interfaces, which relies on electron–electron energy transfer rather than the transport of charge, is demonstrated through ultrafast infrared spectroscopy. This ballistic thermal injection process allows for extended modulation of plasmonic absorption in epsilon-near-zero media.
Optical reflectance spectroscopy provides a direct observation of layer-hybridized moiré excitons in angle-aligned transition metal dichalcogenide heterostructures.
The internal surface of an optical fibre can be covered by uniform two-dimensional-material layers for highly nonlinear and low-loss light propagation.
Both extrinsic and intrinsic factors determine the properties of ferroic materials and are difficult to disentangle. This study on artificial crystals of planar nanomagnets with well-defined, tuneable magnetic interactions unveils the intrinsic correlations between microscopic interactions and macroscopic properties such as the domain size and morphology or the domain-wall mobility.
Genetically improved artificial metalloenzymes in DNA protocells convert signalling molecules into DNA-interacting metabolites that induce downstream growth, functional adaptation and fusion processes inside protocells and between protocells.
Measurements of electrical conductance in double-stranded DNA suggest that the backbones mediate the long-distance conduction in dsDNA, contrary to the common wisdom in DNA electronics.
The strength of the plasmonic field between a plasmonic particle and a Au surface can be measured at ~2-Å resolution by following the Raman peaks of a suitably labelled self-assembly monolayer.
Spillover hydrogenation is facet specific and occurs on atomically dispersed Pd catalyst on Cu(100). Knowing this, cost-effective catalysts with extremely low Pd loading are fabricated that successfully catalyse the semi-hydrogenation of a broad range of alkynes with high activity and selectivity.