Materials science

News & Views | 14 February 2020

Why surface roughness is similar at different scales

Most surfaces are rough at many length scales. Simulations show that this characteristic originates at the atomic level in metal-based materials when smooth blocks of these materials are compressed.

Astrid S. de Wijn

News & Views | 12 February 2020

Ordered absences observed in porous framework materials

Prussian blue analogues are archetypes of coordination solids, in which metal ions are bridged by ligands to form extended network structures. An analysis reveals a surprising ordering of the gaps found in their crystal lattices.

Adam Jaffe
& Jeffrey R. Long

Nature Podcast | 12 February 2020

Podcast: The puzzling structures of muddled materials, and paving the way for the quantum internet

Hear the latest from the world of science, brought to you by Nick Howe and Shamini Bundell.

Article | 12 February 2020

Hidden diversity of vacancy networks in Prussian blue analogues

The growth of single-crystal Prussian blue analogues and their analysis using X-ray diffuse scattering reveals diverse, non-random vacancy arrangements and information about the micropore-network characteristics of these materials.

Arkadiy Simonov
, Trees De Baerdemaeker
& Andrew L. Goodwin

News & Views | 05 February 2020

A platform for making and transferring oxide films

Crystalline films of technologically useful oxide materials have been grown by a method based on surface-modified substrates. Unlike usual oxide films, these can be easily transferred to any material.

Atsushi Tsukazaki

News Feature | 05 February 2020

3D printing gets bigger, faster and stronger

Research advances are changing the image of a once-niche technology.

Mark Zastrow

Article | 05 February 2020

Heterogeneous integration of single-crystalline complex-oxide membranes

A universal mechanical exfoliation method of creating freestanding membranes of complex-oxide materials with different crystal structures and orientations and stacking them to produce a range of artificial heterostructures with hybridized physical properties is described.

Hyun S. Kum
, Hyungwoo Lee
& Jeehwan Kim

Article | 05 February 2020

A droplet-based electricity generator with high instantaneous power density

A device involving a polytetrafluoroethylene film, an indium tin oxide substrate and an aluminium electrode allows improved electricity generation from water droplets, which bridge the previously disconnected circuit components.

Wanghuai Xu
, Huanxi Zheng
& Zuankai Wang

Article | 05 February 2020

Quantum crystal structure in the 250-kelvin superconducting lanthanum hydride

Quantum atomic fluctuations have a crucial role in stabilizing the crystal structure of the high-pressure superconducting phase of lanthanum hydride.

Ion Errea
, Francesco Belli
& José A. Flores-Livas

Article | 03 February 2020

Li metal deposition and stripping in a solid-state battery via Coble creep

By containing lithium metal within oriented tubes of a mixed ionic-electronic conductor, a 3D anode for lithium metal batteries is produced that overcomes chemomechanical stability issues at the electrolyte interface.

Yuming Chen
, Ziqiang Wang
& Ju Li

News & Views | 29 January 2020

A milestone in the hunt for metallic hydrogen

An optical study of cold solid hydrogen at extreme pressures indicates that electrons in the material are free to move like those in a metal. This suggests that the long-sought metallic phase of hydrogen might have been realized.

Serge Desgreniers

Article | 29 January 2020

Synchrotron infrared spectroscopic evidence of the probable transition to metal hydrogen

The probable transition of hydrogen to its metal state near 425 GPa is observed, with the required high pressures created using a toroidal diamond anvil cell.

Paul Loubeyre
, Florent Occelli
& Paul Dumas

Article | 27 January 2020

Gram-scale bottom-up flash graphene synthesis

Flash Joule heating of inexpensive carbon sources is used to produce gram-scale quantities of high-quality graphene in under a second, without the need for a furnace, solvents or reactive gases.

Duy X. Luong
, Ksenia V. Bets
& James M. Tour

News & Views | 22 January 2020

Versatile strategy for making 2D materials

Two-dimensional materials have potential uses in flexible electronics, biosensors and water purification. A method for producing air-stable 2D materials on an industrial scale, now reported, is a key step in bringing them to market.

Wei Sun Leong

Article | 22 January 2020

Conversion of non-van der Waals solids to 2D transition-metal chalcogenides

A synthetic approach is described, for efficiently converting non-van der Waals solids into two-dimensional van der Waals transition-metal chalcogenide layers with specific phases, enabling the high-throughput production of monolayers.

Zhiguo Du
, Shubin Yang
& Pulickel M. Ajayan

Article | 20 January 2020

Dualities and non-Abelian mechanics

Dualities—mathematical mappings between different systems—can act as hidden symmetries that enable materials design beyond that suggested by crystallographic space groups.

Michel Fruchart
, Yujie Zhou
& Vincenzo Vitelli

News & Views | 15 January 2020

Transparent crystals with ultrahigh piezoelectricity

It has been difficult to make transparent materials that have extremely high piezoelectricity — a useful property related to the coupling of electric fields and mechanical strain. This hurdle has now been overcome.

Jurij Koruza

Article | 15 January 2020

Design and synthesis of multigrain nanocrystals via geometric misfit strain

Heteroepitaxy is used to precisely control the growth of Mn₃O₄ shells on the faces of a Co₃O₄ nanocube crystal, producing uniform grain boundary defects and highly ordered multigrain nanostructures.

Myoung Hwan Oh
, Min Gee Cho
& Taeghwan Hyeon

Article | 15 January 2020

Transparent ferroelectric crystals with ultrahigh piezoelectricity

The use of alternating-current electric fields to control domain size in ferroelectric crystals affords excellent transparency, piezoelectricity and birefringence.

Chaorui Qiu
, Bo Wang
& Fei Li

Article | 15 January 2020

Antagonistic cooperativity between crystal growth modifiers

Inhibitor pairs that suppress the crystallization of haematin, which is a part of malaria parasites’ physiology, show unexpected antagonism due to attenuation of step pinning by kink blockers.

Wenchuan Ma
, James F. Lutsko
& Peter G. Vekilov

Article | 15 January 2020

Archimedean lattices emerge in template-directed eutectic solidification

Directional solidification of a simple AgCl-KCl lamellar eutectic material is modified by the presence of a pillar template, leading to disordered, trefoil, quatrefoil, cinquefoil and hexafoil mesostructures.

Ashish A. Kulkarni
, Erik Hanson
& Paul V. Braun

Article | 15 January 2020

Direct thermal neutron detection by the 2D semiconductor ⁶LiInP₂Se₆

The semiconductor ⁶LiInP₂Se₆ is used for the direct detection of thermal neutrons at room temperature, demonstrating good energy resolution.

Daniel G. Chica
, Yihui He
& Mercouri G. Kanatzidis

Article | 15 January 2020

Classification with a disordered dopant-atom network in silicon

The nonlinearity of hopping conduction in a disordered network of boron dopant atoms in silicon is used to perform nonlinear classification and feature extraction.

Tao Chen
, Jeroen van Gelder
& Wilfred G. van der Wiel

Article | 13 January 2020

Fast two-qubit logic with holes in germanium

Spin qubits based on hole states in strained germanium could offer the most scalable platform for quantum computation.

N. W. Hendrickx
, D. P. Franke
& M. Veldhorst

News & Views | 08 January 2020

A structurally unstable semiconductor stabilized and enhanced by strain

Semiconductors known as halide perovskites have remarkable optoelectronic properties, but their structural instability limits practical applications. A solution has been found that involves squeezing the compounds’ crystal lattices.

Jian Shi

Article | 08 January 2020

Synthesis and properties of free-standing monolayer amorphous carbon

The synthesis of surprisingly stable, free-standing single layers of amorphous carbon and their analysis by atomic-resolution imaging could settle a debate about their atomic arrangement and offer unusual electronics applications.

Chee-Tat Toh
, Hongji Zhang
& Barbaros Özyilmaz

Article | 08 January 2020

Strain engineering and epitaxial stabilization of halide perovskites

A method of deposition of mixed-cation hybrid perovskite films as lattice-mismatched substrates for an α-FAPbI₃ film is described, giving strains of up to 2.4 per cent while also stabilizing the metastable α-FAPbI₃ phase for several hundred days.

Yimu Chen
, Yusheng Lei
& Sheng Xu

Article | 08 January 2020

Single-chain heteropolymers transport protons selectively and rapidly

A random heteropolymer based on four monomers can facilitate proton transport across lipid bilayers almost as rapidly as natural ion channels and with high selectivity over other ions.

Tao Jiang
, Aaron Hall
& Ting Xu

Article | 08 January 2020

Proton-assisted growth of ultra-flat graphene films

A growth process in which protons decouple graphene from the underlying substrate greatly reduces the number of wrinkles that usually degrade large graphene films grown by chemical vapour deposition.

Guowen Yuan
, Dongjing Lin
& Libo Gao

Article | 01 January 2020

Inverse transition of labyrinthine domain patterns in ferroelectric thin films

The labyrinthine domain patterns formed in ultrathin films of ferroelectric oxides by subcritical quenching undergo an inverse phase transition to the less-symmetric parallel-stripe domain structure upon increasing temperature.

Y. Nahas
, S. Prokhorenko
& L. Bellaiche

Article | 01 January 2020

Atomic imaging of the edge structure and growth of a two-dimensional hexagonal ice

Real-space imaging of the edge structures and growth of a two-dimensional ice on a gold substrate is achieved using noncontact atomic-force microscopy with a carbon monoxide tip.

Runze Ma
, Duanyun Cao
& Ying Jiang

News Feature | 31 December 2019

The super-cool materials that send heat to space

Paints, plastics and even wood can be engineered to stay cool in direct sunlight — but their role in displacing power-hungry air conditioners remains unclear.

XiaoZhi Lim

Article | 18 December 2019

Molecular heterogeneity drives reconfigurable nematic liquid crystal drops

Study of droplets containing nematic liquid crystal oligomers shows that a heterogeneous distribution of chain lengths plays a key part in driving reversible shape transformations with cooling and heating.

Wei-Shao Wei
, Yu Xia
& A. G. Yodh

News & Views | 18 December 2019

Magnetic and topological order united in a crystal

A material that has electrically conducting surfaces has been found to show, when cooled, a type of magnetic ordering that reduces conduction at the surfaces. Such remarkable behaviour could have practical applications.

Roger S. K. Mong
& Joel E. Moore

Article | 18 December 2019

Cooperative elastic fluctuations provide tuning of the metal–insulator transition

Theoretical modelling shows that elastic fluctuations can enable the tuning of metal-to-insulator transitions, potentially also explaining the dependence of the transition temperature on cation radius in perovskite transition-metal oxides.

G. G. Guzmán-Verri
, R. T. Brierley
& P. B. Littlewood

Article | 18 December 2019

Large magnetic gap at the Dirac point in Bi₂Te₃/MnBi₂Te₄ heterostructures

In theory, the anomalous quantum Hall effect is observed in edge channels of topological insulators when there is a magnetic energy gap at the Dirac point; this gap has now been observed by low-temperature photoelectron spectroscopy in Mn-doped Bi₂Te₃.

E. D. L. Rienks
, S. Wimmer
& G. Springholz

Article | 18 December 2019

Prediction and observation of an antiferromagnetic topological insulator

An intrinsic antiferromagnetic topological insulator, MnBi₂Te₄, is theoretically predicted and then realized experimentally, with implications for the study of exotic quantum phenomena.

M. M. Otrokov
, I. I. Klimovskikh
& E. V. Chulkov

News & Views | 16 December 2019

The physics of ice skating

The slipperiness of ice is poorly understood at a microscopic level. Experiments that probe how the surface of ice melts and flows in response to wear help to explain the exceptionally low friction that underpins winter sports.

Daniel Bonn