Condensed-matter physics articles within Nature Materials

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  • Letter |

    Materials with perpendicular anisotropy receive considerable attention owing to their potential in being employed in efficient memory devices. It is now shown that a type of magnetic tunnel junction widely studied for in-plane magnetic anisotropy has all the properties necessary to realize stable and efficient devices based on perpendicular magnetic anisotropy.

    • S. Ikeda
    • , K. Miura
    •  & H. Ohno

  • Letter |

    Fibres are typically used as passive devices, whether in fibre-optical cables used in telecommunciations or as yarns for clothing. The demonstration of polymer-based piezoelectric fibres that can be drawn to tens of metres in length, and whose acoustic response can be actively controlled, suggests possible applications in, for example, medical imaging or acoustic sensing.

    • S. Egusa
    • , Z. Wang
    •  & Y. Fink

  • Article |

    The manipulation of spin states is a key requirement in spintronics. In semiconductor microcavities, a multistate switching of the spin state of polaritons, which form as a result of the coupling of photons and excitons in the microcavity, may lead to new spintronics devices.

    • T. K. Paraïso
    • , M. Wouters
    •  & B. Deveaud-Plédran

  • News & Views |

    A new route to layer-by-layer assembly of metal–organic framework thin films affords highly ordered and controllable surfaces with potential in chemical sensing and catalyst applications.

    • Mark A. Green

  • Article |

    The control of magnetic properties by electric fields is key to realizing spintronics devices. The surface of the antiferromagnetic magnetoelectric Cr2O3 is now shown to exhibit room-temperature ferromagnetism, whose direction can be switched by an electric field. This magnetization switches the exchange-bias field with magnetic multilayers grown on Cr2O3, promising a new route towards room-temperature spintronics devices.

    • Xi He
    • , Yi Wang
    •  & Christian Binek

  • Letter |

    The search for active semiconductor photocatalysts that split water directly under visible-light irradiation remains challenging for solar applications. An orthophosphate semiconductor, Ag3PO4, which is capable of harnessing visible light to oxidize water as well as decompose organic contaminants in aqueous solution is now reported.

    • Zhiguo Yi
    • , Jinhua Ye
    •  & Ray L. Withers

  • News & Views |

    Organic light-emitting field-effect transistors surpass the external quantum efficiency of analogous organic light-emitting diodes.

    • Christian Melzer
    •  & Heinz von Seggern

  • Letter |

    Topological insulators have been predicted and recently demonstrated experimentally in a series of binary alloys. It is now show theoretically that ternary half-Heusler alloys have electronic properties similar to those of the experimentally verified topological insulators, and represent a platform for observing quantum topological phenomena.

    • Hsin Lin
    • , L. Andrew Wray
    •  & M. Zahid Hasan

  • News & Views |

    Ternary intermetallic Heusler compounds, originally discovered by a German mining engineer and chemist in 1903, may show exotic topological insulator behaviour unknown to science just five years ago.

    • Marcel Franz

  • Letter |

    Topological insulators have been predicted and recently demonstrated experimentally in a series of binary alloys. It is now show theoretically that about 50 Heusler compounds show features similar to those of the confirmed topological insulator HgTe, which considerably expands the possibility of realizing quantum topological phenomena.

    • Stanislav Chadov
    • , Xiaoliang Qi
    •  & Shou Cheng Zhang

  • Letter |

    When a superconductor is shrunk to the nanoscale, quantum size effects are predicted to strongly influence superconductivity. This is now demonstrated in Sn nanoparticles in which a reduction in size leads to a substantial enhancement of the superconducting gap.

    • Sangita Bose
    • , Antonio M. García-García
    •  & Klaus Kern

  • Letter |

    The ability to propagate heat in a film should improve with increasing thickness. However, graphene has a higher thermal conductivity than graphite, despite having a smaller thickness. The crossover from two-dimensional to bulk graphite is now studied experimentally and explained theoretically. The results may pave the way to thermal management applications in nanoelectronics.

    • Suchismita Ghosh
    • , Wenzhong Bao
    •  & Alexander A. Balandin

  • Article |

    An organic light-emitting transistor has now been fabricated with a trilayer heterostructure. This architecture is shown to prevent both photon loss at the electrodes and exciton-charge quenching, thereby dramatically improving device efficiency and establishing these types of transistor as a promising alternative to organic light-emitting diodes.

    • Raffaella Capelli
    • , Stefano Toffanin
    •  & Michele Muccini

  • Article |

    Tailoring the thermal conductivity of nanostructured materials is a fundamental challenge for nano- and microelectronics heat management. It is now demonstrated how to modify the thermal conductivity of SiGe by engineering nanodot inclusions in regions as short as 15 nm. A similar approach could used on other materials, extending the range of thermal conductivities available.

    • G. Pernot
    • , M. Stoffel
    •  & N. Mingo

  • News & Views |

    The use of a ferroelectric tunnel junction to control the spin polarization of adjacent magnetic electrodes promises a new approach to the use of interface effects for low-power-consumption spintronic devices.

    • R. Ramesh

  • News & Views |

    Patching carbon and boron nitride nanodomains emerges as an efficient way to engineer bandgaps in graphene, opening a new avenue for optoelectronic devices.

    • Angel Rubio

  • News & Views |

    The prediction of interface structures is an uncertain and time-consuming task. A technique merging ab initio calculations with a genetic algorithm simplifies the process and provides suitable solutions of the atomic structures that would be hard to envisage a priori.

    • W. Craig Carter

  • Article |

    Understanding the interaction of water with oxide surfaces at the molecular level could prove to be significant for controlling the catalytic activity of complex nanoparticles on insulating films. Two types of selective dissociation pathway involving electronic and vibrational excitation are now observed for a single water molecule on MgO thin films.

    • Hyung-Joon Shin
    • , Jaehoon Jung
    •  & Maki Kawai

  • Article |

    Electronics that are capable of intimate integration with the surfaces of biological tissues create opportunities for improving animal/machine interfaces. A bio-interfaced system of ultrathin electronics supported by bioresorbable silk-fibroin substrates is now presented. Mounting such devices on tissue and then allowing the silk to dissolve initiates a conformal wrapping process that is driven by capillary forces.

    • Dae-Hyeong Kim
    • , Jonathan Viventi
    •  & John A. Rogers

  • Letter |

    Quantum transport phenomena have been widely investigated in semiconducting compounds, but extending these studies to oxides is not simple owing to their low mobilities. It is now demonstrated that SrTiO3 films can be grown by molecular beam epitaxy; the films show very high electron mobility, opening the way to oxide heterostructures with excellent transport properties.

    • Junwoo Son
    • , Pouya Moetakef
    •  & Susanne Stemmer

  • Letter |

    Solid-state materials showing giant caloric effects near room temperature could provide an alternative to cooling devices based on gas cycles. Strong emphasis has so far been dedicated to caloric effects induced by a magnetic field. It is now demonstrated that a small pressure applied to the compound Ni—Mn–In gives rise to a giant caloric response.

    • Lluís Mañosa
    • , David González-Alonso
    •  & Mehmet Acet

  • News & Views |

    By using drug-encapsulating nanoparticles as the basis for electrostatic assembly, it is possible to generate highly functional films that do double duty. These adaptable thin films can be used both for releasing the drug in a controlled fashion and for biological imaging.

    • Paula T. Hammond

  • Letter |

    Approaches for controlling surface wettability and liquid spreading are numerous and diverse, but introducing directionality to the control of these phenomena is far from trivial. Nanostructured surfaces are now used to allow the propagation of a liquid in a single direction, while constraining it in the other three directions.

    • Kuang-Han Chu
    • , Rong Xiao
    •  & Evelyn N. Wang

  • Letter |

    The strong dependence of the magnetic properties on the growth conditions in (Ga, Mn)As has created the view that ferromagnetism is associated with an intrinsic inhomogeneity. Muon-spin-relaxation experiments now show that strong and homogeneous ferromagnetism is instead present in both insulating and metallic films.

    • S. R. Dunsiger
    • , J. P. Carlo
    •  & Y. J. Uemura

  • Letter |

    Several routes designed to induce a bandgap opening in graphene have been proposed. It is now demonstrated that hydrogen adsorption on the Moiré pattern induced by an iridium substrate can induce a bandgap of 450 meV.

    • Richard Balog
    • , Bjarke Jørgensen
    •  & Liv Hornekær

  • Letter |

    The strong coupling of light and matter is responsible for phenomena such as Bose–Einstein condensation. In a study of strong-coupling effects in semiconductor microcavities, the interaction between a two-level electronic system and a light field has now been observed.

    • J. Kasprzak
    • , S. Reitzenstein
    •  & W. Langbein

  • Article |

    An exothermic chemical reaction coupled with a one-dimensional conductor has been predicted to give rise to self-propagating waves with high thermal conductivity. This is now demonstrated experimentally with carbon nanotubes used as guides for the waves, which propagate with high thermal conductivity and with electric pulses of very intense power.

    • Wonjoon Choi
    • , Seunghyun Hong
    •  & Michael S. Strano

  • News & Views |

    The observation of Aharonov–Bohm oscillations in nanoribbons of Bi2Se3 opens the way for electronic transport experiments in nanoscale three-dimensional topological insulators.

    • Thomas Ihn

  • News & Views |

    Conflicting observations of the speed at which various ferromagnetic materials respond to an external femtosecond laser excitation have generated considerable controversy. It is now shown that ferromagnets can be divided in two categories, according to the values of specific magnetic parameters.

    • Markus G. Münzenberg

  • News & Views |

    A plethora of chemical tools is necessary for probing the surface reconstruction of a complex metal oxide.

    • Ulrike Diebold

  • Letter |

    Multiferroics are promising for their ability to use an electric polarization to control magnetism and vice versa. However, ferroelastic effects during the switching of multiferroics such as BiFeO3 destabilize the ferroelectric state. A new approach for the switching of these sorts of compound may now represent a solution to this problem.

    • S. H. Baek
    • , H. W. Jang
    •  & C. B. Eom

  • Article |

    Despite having many similarities with graphene, single-layer boron nitride has a very large bandgap. Now, single-layer hybrids consisting of a blend of domains of boron nitride and graphene have been synthesized. By varying the percentage of boron nitride it is possible to tune the electronic properties, which is a very promising development for potential devices.

    • Lijie Ci
    • , Li Song
    •  & Pulickel M. Ajayan

  • Letter |

    While superconductivity experts investigate the fundamental properties of iron pnictides, it is worth wondering whether the properties of these materials are good enough for applications. A strategy for growing high-quality BaFe2As2 thin films shows that the use of an appropriate buffer layer allows very high critical currents to be reached.

    • S. Lee
    • , J. Jiang
    •  & C. B. Eom

  • Article |

    Efforts in predicting crystal structures from first principles have mainly focused on the bulk materials. A general approach based on a genetic algorithm is now proposed to simulate grain boundaries and heterophase interfaces in multicomponent systems. The efficiency of the approach is demonstrated in the case of grain boundaries in SrTiO3.

    • Alvin L.-S. Chua
    • , Nicole A. Benedek
    •  & Adrian P. Sutton

  • News & Views |

    The formation of vortices in multiferroic hexagonal manganites, where the sign of electric polarization changes six times around the vortex core, points towards the origin of composite multiferroic domain walls.

    • Maxim Mostovoy

  • News & Views |

    Spin relaxation in organic materials is expected to be slow because of weak spin–orbit coupling. The effects of deuteration and coherent spin excitation show that the spin-relaxation time is actually limited by hyperfine fields.

    • Peter A. Bobbert

  • Letter |

    Resolving the surface structure and chemistry of oxides such as strontium titanate has so far proved difficult. Rings of six or eight corner-sharing TiO4 tetrahedra and a homologous series of surface reconstructions for SrTiO3(110) are now predicted.

    • James A. Enterkin
    • , Arun K. Subramanian
    •  & Laurence D. Marks

  • News & Views |

    By using an ionic liquid as a gate dielectric, superconductivity can be induced in an inorganic band insulator up to a temperature of 15 K by an electric field, opening new directions in superconductivity research.

    • Kosmas Prassides

  • Letter |

    Creating p–n junctions using semiconducting polymers has proved to be challenging because of difficulties in depositing semiconducting polymer films. Now, by using a cationic conjugated-polymer electrolyte and a neutral conjugated-polymer layer, devices with a fixed bilayer organic p–n junction and fast response times have been fabricated.

    • Corey V. Hoven
    • , Huiping Wang
    •  & Guillermo C. Bazan

  • Letter |

    Electron transport through metal–molecule contacts greatly affects the operation of electronic devices based on organic semiconductors and single-molecule junctions, but the nature of the contact barrier remains poorly understood. Scanning tunnelling microscopy experiments reveal a significant variation on the submolecular scale, leading to a scheme to locally manipulate the potential barrier of the molecular nanocontacts with atomic precision.

    • Lucia Vitali
    • , Giacomo Levita
    •  & Klaus Kern

  • Letter |

    Why does the bandgap in semiconducting carbon nanotubes depend on the way it is measured? It is now shown that the results obtained by scanning tunnelling spectroscopy are usually influenced by screening, which creates the discrepancy with optical measurements. The results highlight the importance of many-body effects in the electronic properties of carbon nanotubes.

    • H. Lin
    • , J. Lagoute
    •  & S. Rousset

  • Article |

    The ability to control the surface chemistry of silicon is important for microelectronic applications. Chemical species can now be stabilized on Si(111) surfaces using a partially alkoxylated surface as a nanopatterning template.

    • David J. Michalak
    • , Sandrine Rivillon Amy
    •  & Yves J. Chabal

  • Letter |

    Control of magnetization in ferromagnetic metals can be achieved through the spin torque of currents of spin-polarized electrons, usually injected externally. It is now shown that even without this spin-polarized injection, a current can induce strong spin torques through the Rashba effect. The efficiency of this process makes it a realistic candidate for room-temperature spintronic applications.

    • Ioan Mihai Miron
    • , Gilles Gaudin
    •  & Pietro Gambardella

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