Research Highlight |
Featured
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Article |
Pseudo-halide anion engineering for α-FAPbI3 perovskite solar cells
Incorporation of the pseudo-halide anion formate during the fabrication of α-FAPbI3 perovskite films eliminates deleterious iodide vacancies, yielding solar cell devices with a certified power conversion efficiency of 25.21 per cent and long-term operational stability.
- Jaeki Jeong
- , Minjin Kim
- & Jin Young Kim
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News & Views |
Antimatter cooled by laser light
A laser beam has been used to slow down antihydrogen atoms, the simplest atoms made of pure antimatter. The technique might enable some fundamental symmetries of the Universe to be probed with exceptionally high precision.
- Masaki Hori
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Editorial |
Net-zero carbon pledges must be meaningful to avert climate disaster
More countries are pledging to achieve carbon neutrality. They must now show how they plan to do this.
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Outlook |
How athletes hit a fastball
To strike a ball moving at lightning speeds in baseball, tennis and cricket, athletes and coaches are increasingly embracing training techniques involving virtual reality.
- Liam Drew
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News & Views |
Atomic structure of a glass imaged at last
The positions of all the atoms in a sample of a metallic glass have been measured experimentally — fulfilling a decades-old dream for glass scientists, and raising the prospect of fresh insight into the structures of disordered solids.
- Paul Voyles
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Article |
Determining the three-dimensional atomic structure of an amorphous solid
A method that achieves atomic-resolution tomographic imaging of an amorphous solid enables detailed quantitative characterization of the short- and medium-range order of the three-dimensional atomic arrangement.
- Yao Yang
- , Jihan Zhou
- & Jianwei Miao
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Article |
Flavour Hund’s coupling, Chern gaps and charge diffusivity in moiré graphene
Chemical potential measurements in twisted bilayer graphene reveal the importance of Coulomb repulsion and exchange interactions in the symmetry-broken ground state, and provide the charge diffusivity in the strange-metal regime.
- Jeong Min Park
- , Yuan Cao
- & Pablo Jarillo-Herrero
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Nature Podcast |
Antimatter cooled with lasers for the first time
Laser-cooled antimatter opens up new physics experiments, and the staggering economic cost of invasive species.
- Benjamin Thompson
- & Nick Petrić Howe
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Article
| Open AccessLaser cooling of antihydrogen atoms
The successful laser cooling of trapped antihydrogen, the antimatter atom formed by an antiproton and a positron (anti-electron), is reported.
- C. J. Baker
- , W. Bertsche
- & J. S. Wurtele
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Article |
Three-dimensional nanoprinting via charged aerosol jets
A 3D-printing strategy involving jets of charged aerosol particles guided by electric-field lines allows direct deposition of various metal nanostructures, including helices, letters and vertical split-ring resonator structures.
- Wooik Jung
- , Yoon-Ho Jung
- & Mansoo Choi
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Article |
Stabilization of liquid instabilities with ionized gas jets
A weakly ionized gas jet impinging on a water surface is shown to produce a more stable cavity than does a neutral gas jet, with implications for plasma–liquid interactions.
- Sanghoo Park
- , Wonho Choe
- & Uroš Cvelbar
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Research Highlight |
Device sketches objects 200 kilometres away, one photon at a time
The laser-based apparatus receives a steady drip of single photons to craft portraits of distant targets.
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Technology Feature |
AI spots cell structures that humans can’t
Models can predict the location of cell structures from light-microscopy images alone, without the need for harmful fluorescence labelling.
- Amber Dance
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News |
Long-awaited muon physics experiment nears moment of truth
A result that has been 20 years in the making could reveal the existence of new particles, and upend fundamental physics.
- Davide Castelvecchi
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News |
US urged to invest in sun-dimming studies as climate warms
National academies report is most explicit call yet for a government research programme to explore the controversial field of solar geoengineering.
- Jeff Tollefson
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Research Highlight |
Faint galaxies light up the dark web filling the cosmos
Dim, distant collections of stars hint at the early evolution of the Universe.
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Outline |
Video: The quantum world of diamonds
Defects in diamonds allow them to be used for a diverse array of applications.
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Outline |
Quantum diamond sensors
Synthetic versions of the super-hard gem stone are driving the development of a class of device with applications in biomedicine and beyond.
- Neil Savage
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Outline |
How quantum diamonds work: from imaging magnetic fields to detecting viruses
Diamonds, one of the hardest materials on Earth, are so strong that they can protect fragile quantum states that would otherwise survive only in a vacuum or at ultra-cold temperatures. Engineers are mastering the art of growing diamonds with special properties and detecting their quantum spins — opening up a range of sensing applications in the life sciences and elsewhere.
- Neil Savage
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Nature Podcast |
Network of world’s most accurate clocks paves way to redefine time
A web of three optical atomic clocks show incredibly accurate measurements of time, and the trailblazing astronomer who found hints of dark matter.
- Shamini Bundell
- & Nick Petrić Howe
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Research Highlight |
An atom shuffles its electrons at ultrahigh speed — and is caught in the act
Scientists capture the movement of electrons in a xenon atom, a phenomenon that lasts for a fraction of one-billionth of a second.
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News Round-Up |
Australia’s oldest rock painting and a prestigious mathematics prize
The latest science news, in brief.
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News & Views |
Atomic clocks compared with astounding accuracy
Three atomic clocks based on different atoms have been compared with record accuracy. The findings bring a redefinition of the second a step closer and aid the search for dark matter — an elusive component of the Universe.
- Rachel M. Godun
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Article |
Control and readout of a superconducting qubit using a photonic link
High-fidelity control and readout of a superconducting qubit is performed with a low-noise optical fibre link that delivers microwave signals directly to the millikelvin quantum computing environment.
- F. Lecocq
- , F. Quinlan
- & J. D. Teufel
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Article
| Open AccessNondestructive detection of photonic qubits
A nondestructive detector of photonic qubits, comprising a single 87Rb atom trapped in the centre point of two crossed fibre-based optical resonators, is demonstrated.
- Dominik Niemietz
- , Pau Farrera
- & Gerhard Rempe
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News & Views |
Effects of rising CO2 levels on carbon sequestration are coordinated above and below ground
An analysis of experiments in which the air around terrestrial plants or plant communities was enriched with carbon dioxide reveals a coordination between the resulting changes in soil carbon stocks and above-ground plant biomass.
- Ana Bastos
- & Katrin Fleischer
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Article |
Macroscopic materials assembled from nanoparticle superlattices
Polymer-covered inorganic nanoparticles are designed to self-assemble into micrometre-sized superlattice crystallites that can subsequently be built into freestanding centimetre-scale solids with hierarchical order across seven orders of magnitude.
- Peter J. Santos
- , Paul A. Gabrys
- & Robert J. Macfarlane
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Article |
A four-qubit germanium quantum processor
Using germanium quantum dots, a four-qubit processor capable of single-, two-, three-, and four-qubit gates, demonstrated by the creation of four-qubit Greenberger−Horne−Zeilinger states, is the largest yet realized with solid-state electron spins.
- Nico W. Hendrickx
- , William I. L. Lawrie
- & Menno Veldhorst
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Article |
Frequency ratio measurements at 18-digit accuracy using an optical clock network
A network of optical atomic clocks based on three different atomic species is reported and their frequency ratios are measured with uncertainties at or below 8 × 10−18.
- Kyle Beloy
- , Martha I. Bodine
- & Xiaogang Zhang
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Research Highlight |
Solar panels that throw shade on canals are an environmental win–win
Placing solar arrays over canals would prevent water loss and improve panels’ energy harvest.
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Technology Feature |
Electronic skin: from flexibility to a sense of touch
Flexible circuits inspired by human skin offer options for health monitoring, prosthetics and pressure-sensing robots.
- Katharine Sanderson
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Where I Work |
Engineering a brighter future for refugees and female scientists in Uganda
Dorothy Okello teaches computing to displaced people, and launches programmes to get more women into science, technology and business.
- Sara Moraca
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Book Review |
Vera Rubin, astronomer extraordinaire — a new biography
She confirmed dark matter, probed spiral galaxies and fought inequality
- Alison Abbott
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Research Highlight |
A plastic fabric could keep people cool — and help to fight global warming
The stain-resistant textile needs less washing, which means less energy consumption and lower emissions of greenhouse gases.
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Nature Podcast |
The AI that argues back
A computer that can participate in live debates against human opponents.
- Nick Petrić Howe
- & Shamini Bundell
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News & Views |
Argument technology for debating with humans
A fully autonomous computer system has been developed that can take part in live debates with people. The findings hint at a future in which artificial intelligence can help humans to formulate and make sense of complex arguments.
- Chris Reed
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News |
Abel Prize celebrates union of mathematics and computer science
The work of winners László Lovász and Avi Wigderson underpins applications from Internet security to the study of networks.
- Davide Castelvecchi
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Article |
An autonomous debating system
An artificial intelligence system that can engage in a competitive debate with humans is presented.
- Noam Slonim
- , Yonatan Bilu
- & Ranit Aharonov
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Article |
High-order superlattices by rolling up van der Waals heterostructures
A simple but flexible technique based on a capillary-force-driven rolling-up process produces high-order van der Waals superlattices that are hard to produce with existing fabrication techniques.
- Bei Zhao
- , Zhong Wan
- & Xiangfeng Duan
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Research Highlight |
A quantum light source outshines a competitor 1,000-fold
A small device churns out pairs of entangled photons with the help of an unusual material.
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Research Highlight |
Move over, graphene: scientists tame boron equivalent
The addition of hydrogen turns a highly reactive sheet of boron atoms into a stable material.
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Research Highlight |
A resident’s guide to avoiding lethal blasts from the Galaxy
Astronomers map out the most benign environments for life in the Milky Way over the past 13 billion years.
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News |
Record number of asteroids seen whizzing past Earth in 2020
Despite pandemic disruption, astronomers detected thousands of previously unknown near-Earth asteroids last year.
- Alexandra Witze
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News & Views |
Giant ice cube hints at the existence of cosmic antineutrinos
Evidence of a rare neutrino-interaction process called the Glashow resonance has been observed by a detector buried deep in the Antarctic ice — opening up a way to probe neutrino formation in astrophysical sources.
- Carla Distefano
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News |
Evidence of elusive Majorana particle dies — but computing hope lives on
Nature retraction is a setback for Microsoft’s approach to quantum computing, as researchers continue to search for the exotic quantum states.
- Davide Castelvecchi
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Article |
Towards real-time photorealistic 3D holography with deep neural networks
A deep-learning-based approach using a convolutional neural network is used to synthesize photorealistic colour three-dimensional holograms from a single RGB-depth image in real time, and termed tensor holography.
- Liang Shi
- , Beichen Li
- & Wojciech Matusik
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Article |
Large-area display textiles integrated with functional systems
A large electronic display textile that is flexible, breathable and withstands repeated machine-washing is integrated with a keyboard and power supply to create a wearable, durable communication tool.
- Xiang Shi
- , Yong Zuo
- & Huisheng Peng
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News & Views |
Ultra-weak gravitational field detected
An experiment shows that Newton’s law of gravity holds even for two masses as small as about 90 milligrams. The findings take us a step nearer to measuring gravitational fields that are so weak that they could enter the quantum regime.
- Christian Rothleitner
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Article |
Experimental quantum speed-up in reinforcement learning agents
A reinforcement learning experiment using a programmable integrated nanophotonic processor shows that a quantum communication channel with the environment speeds up the learning process of an agent.
- V. Saggio
- , B. E. Asenbeck
- & P. Walther