Physical sciences articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Phase-sensitive measurements are important to gain insights of light-matter interactions and require phase-controlled pulses. Here the authors demonstrate the phase control and interferometric autocorrelation on a free electron laser using SASE pulse pair created with a split and delay unit.

    • Sergey Usenko
    • , Andreas Przystawik
    •  & Tim Laarmann

  • Article
    | Open Access

    When particle-laden drops evaporate, coffee ring patterns form which can affect particle deposition. Here Davidsonet al. show that unlike previously investigated drops, the flows in drying drops of liquid crystals are driven by an increase in surface tension due to liquid crystal concentration.

    • Zoey S. Davidson
    • , Yongyang Huang
    •  & A. G. Yodh

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In the interactive model of communication, information is exchanged bidirectionally between a sender and receiver. Here, the authors realise interactive communication between two artificial nanoparticles, which relay information between each other in the form of chemical messengers and enzymatic reactions.

    • Antoni Llopis-Lorente
    • , Paula Díez
    •  & Ramón Martínez-Máñez

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Cavitation is the formation of vapour bubbles within a liquid and is undesirable in many industrial applications. Here Stiegeret al. show how the anisotropic fluids influence this process in a nematic liquid crystal and find that orientational ordering of molecules can tune the onset of cavitation.

    • Tillmann Stieger
    • , Hakam Agha
    •  & Anupam Sengupta

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Zirconium phosphonate based metal-organic frameworks often exhibit superior chemical stabilities, but typically exist as poorly crystalline or amorphous materials. Here the authors exploit an ionothermal method to obtain highly porous and remarkably stable single crystalline zirconium phosphonate frameworks that can efficiently remove uranyl ions from aqueous solutions.

    • Tao Zheng
    • , Zaixing Yang
    •  & Shuao Wang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The huge amount of data generated in fields like neuroscience or finance calls for effective strategies that mine data to reveal underlying dynamics. Here Brunton et al.develop a data-driven technique to analyze chaotic systems and predict their dynamics in terms of a forced linear model.

    • Steven L. Brunton
    • , Bingni W. Brunton
    •  & J. Nathan Kutz

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Deforestation and edge effects around cleared areas impact forest stability. Here, the authors examine human impacts on Amazonian forest-savanna bistability and show that tree cover bimodality is enhanced in regions close to human activities and is nearly absent in regions unaffected by human activities.

    • Bert Wuyts
    • , Alan R. Champneys
    •  & Joanna I. House

  • Article
    | Open Access

    DNA-templated silver nanoclusters possess desirable optical properties, but their excited state dynamics remain poorly understood. Here the authors show that intracluster relaxations in such clusters are strongly coupled to a vibrational mode, resulting in ultrafast concerted transfer of population and coherence between excited states.

    • Erling Thyrhaug
    • , Sidsel Ammitzbøll Bogh
    •  & Donatas Zigmantas

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Device-independent self-testing is an approach that allows a complete certification of an unknown quantum state, simply by inspecting outcomes of measurements. Here, the authors demonstrate that any pure bipartite entangled state can be self-tested.

    • Andrea Coladangelo
    • , Koon Tong Goh
    •  & Valerio Scarani

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Both electronic and ionic transport must be optimized in Li4Ti5O12for its use in Li-ion batteries, most promisingly against high voltage cathodes. Here authors synthesize hierarchical porous micrometre-scale structures composed of primary nanoparticles to demonstrate an attractive combination of rate performance, capacity and cycling stability.

    • Mateusz Odziomek
    • , Frédéric Chaput
    •  & Stephane Parola

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Quantitative characterization of supported nanomaterials is challenging, because the nanomaterial signals cannot easily be deconvoluted from those of the substrate. Here, the authors introduce an inventive approach to overcome this problem for electron-based surface analysis techniques.

    • Bo Da
    • , Jiangwei Liu
    •  & Zejun Ding

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Scalable and integratable sources of entangled-photon pairs are an important building block for quantum photonic applications. Here, Huberet al. demonstrate that droplet-etched gallium arsenide quantum dots can emit highly indistinguishable photon pairs with a high degree of entanglement.

    • Daniel Huber
    • , Marcus Reindl
    •  & Rinaldo Trotta

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Identifying pathways and transition states is critical to understanding chemical and biological reactions. Here, the authors introduce a capable computational approach using conformational space annealing to find multiple reaction pathways via global optimization of the Onsager-Machlup action.

    • Juyong Lee
    • , In-Ho Lee
    •  & Bernard R. Brooks

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Scalable and integratable sources of entangled-photon pairs are an important building block for quantum photonic applications. Here, Keilet al. demonstrate that an ensemble of droplet-etched gallium arsenide quantum dots can emit polarization-entangled photons with almost 100% yield.

    • Robert Keil
    • , Michael Zopf
    •  & Oliver G. Schmidt

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Energy drain on micromechanical resonators is always compensated by energy gain from external sources during operation. Here, Chenet al. show a strategy that can sustain stable oscillations by redistributing mechanical energy between coupled vibrational modes when the external energy supply is off.

    • Changyao Chen
    • , Damián H. Zanette
    •  & Daniel López

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Lanthanide elements are difficult to separate from aqueous solution with low energy input. Here, the authors design a peptide that recognizes and drives the precipitation of an insoluble lanthanide complex under physiological conditions, introducing a biomineralization-based approach for rare earth recovery.

    • Takaaki Hatanaka
    • , Akimasa Matsugami
    •  & Nobuhiro Ishida

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Auxetic materials—those that expand laterally when stretched—can possess enhanced mechanical properties, including shear modulus, indentation resistance, and fracture toughness. Here the authors show that 1T-type crystalline 2D transition metal dichalcogenides exhibit intrinsic in-plane negative Poisson’s ratios.

    • Liping Yu
    • , Qimin Yan
    •  & Adrienn Ruzsinszky

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Large negative magnetoresistance is usually related to magnetism and the exceptions are rare. Here, Breuniget al. report a large negative magnetoresistance in a topological insulator, TlBi0.15Sb0.85Te2, which is likely due to the Zeeman effect on a barely percolating current path formed in the disordered bulk.

    • Oliver Breunig
    • , Zhiwei Wang
    •  & Yoichi Ando

  • Article
    | Open Access

    High-entropy alloys represent a new strategy for the design of materials with properties superior to those of conventional alloys, but are largely limited to simple phases of cubic symmetry. By applying high pressures on CrMnFeCoNi, here authors demonstrate synthesis of a hexagonal close-packed phase.

    • Cameron L. Tracy
    • , Sulgiye Park
    •  & Wendy L. Mao

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The rates of acid-catalysed reactions vary in constrained environments. Here the authors show that molecularly sized pores greatly promote aqueous phase alcohol dehydration by enhancing the association between substrate and hydronium ions, and even by lowering the free energy barrier.

    • Hui Shi
    • , Sebastian Eckstein
    •  & Johannes A. Lercher

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Expanding pore sizes and volumes in metal-organic frameworks is challenging, but crucial for the encapsulation of larger guest molecules. Here, Zhou and colleagues report a linker labilization strategy to construct MOFs containing hierarchical pore architectures with dimensions ranging from 1.5 to 18 nm.

    • Shuai Yuan
    • , Lanfang Zou
    •  & Hong-Cai Zhou

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Nanoscopic water droplets in a hydrophobic liquid are abundant in the earth, our bodies and the sky. Here, it is shown that the surface of such a droplet has stronger hydrogen bonds than a planar interface of water and a hydrophobic liquid, equivalent to a 50 K reduction of the surface temperature.

    • Nikolay Smolentsev
    • , Wilbert J. Smit
    •  & Sylvie Roke

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Photon-cutting materials provide a way around efficiency limits for energy conversion by absorbing high-energy photons and ‘cutting’ them into multiple low-energy excitations. Here, the authors show that photon-cutting material can be identified and characterised by studying their bunched emission statistics.

    • Mathijs de Jong
    • , Andries Meijerink
    •  & Freddy T. Rabouw

  • Review Article
    | Open Access

    The conversion of thioesters to amides via acyl transfer has become one of the most important synthetic techniques for the chemical synthesis and modification of proteins. This review discusses this S-to-N acyl transfer process, and highlights some of the key applications across chemistry and biology.

    • Helen M. Burke
    • , Lauren McSweeney
    •  & Eoin M. Scanlan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Rational design of heterogeneous catalysts requires molecular understanding of catalytic processes. Here, the authors attach PtFe and Pd nanocatalysts to Raman signal-enhancing Au-silica nanoparticles, allowing them to spectroscopically observe the active species and bonds involved in CO oxidation in real time.

    • Hua Zhang
    • , Chen Wang
    •  & Zhong-Qun Tian

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Existing methods of characterizing electron beams carrying orbital angular momentum are inefficient as they allow measuring one OAM state at a time. Here the authors demonstrate an OAM spectrometer capable of analysing multiple OAM states and a potential tool for probing magnetic materials.

    • Vincenzo Grillo
    • , Amir H. Tavabi
    •  & Ebrahim Karimi

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Ultrafast nonadiabatic chemical dynamics during molecular photo-transformations remain challenging to describe since electronic/nuclear configurations are coupled. Here the authors use time-resolved X-ray absorption spectroscopy to probe the light-induced spin-state trapping dynamics of [Fe(bpy)3]2+beyond the Born-Oppenheimer approximation.

    • Henrik T. Lemke
    • , Kasper S. Kjær
    •  & Marco Cammarata

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Magnetic skyrmions are potentially suitable for future spintronic devices, but their dynamical behaviour in real space remains elusive. Here, Wooet al. report nanosecond-dynamics of a 100nm-size magnetic skyrmion triggered by current-induced spin-orbit torques.

    • Seonghoon Woo
    • , Kyung Mee Song
    •  & Joonyeon Chang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Huntington's disease is caused by a polyglutamine stretch expansion in the first exon of huntingtin. Here, the authors use infrared spectroscopy and solid-state NMR and show that polymorphic huntingtin exon1 fibres differ in their flanking regions but not their core polyglutamine amyloid structures.

    • Hsiang-Kai Lin
    • , Jennifer C. Boatz
    •  & Patrick C. A. van der Wel

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Pore structure plays an important role in dictating gas storage performance for nanoporous materials. Here, Smit and colleagues develop a topological approach to quantify pore structure similarity, and exploit the resulting descriptor to screen for materials that possess structural similarities with top-performers.

    • Yongjin Lee
    • , Senja D. Barthel
    •  & Berend Smit

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Studies of quantum oscillations provide a valuable probe into the electronic structure of topological semimetals. Matusiaket al. demonstrate that quantum features in ZrSiS can be probed with greater sensitivity using diffusive thermopower than magnetization and electrical resistivity approaches.

    • Marcin Matusiak
    • , J. R. Cooper
    •  & Dariusz Kaczorowski

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Stimuli-responsive materials are commonly used in autonomous systems, whilst it is challenging to power them in a programmable manner. Here, Waniet al. use an optical fibre to control the shape of light-responsive liquid-crystal elastomers, which allow the device to detect and trap targeted objects.

    • Owies M. Wani
    • , Hao Zeng
    •  & Arri Priimagi

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Quasicrystals promise exciting technological advances in optical devices, but their formation mechanism is yet not fully understood. Here, the authors describe a two-dimensional dodecagonal fullerene quasicrystal, forming on a Pt3Ti(111)-surface due to the complex adsorption-energy landscape.

    • M. Paßens
    • , V. Caciuc
    •  & S. Karthäuser

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The emergence of quantum emitters in 2D materials has led to the quest for methods and designs enabling their controllable spatial positioning. Here, the authors use strain engineering to fabricate a deterministic array of quantum emitters in WSe2with nanometre positioning accuracy.

    • Artur Branny
    • , Santosh Kumar
    •  & Brian D Gerardot

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Quantum emitters have been recently isolated in 2D materials, yet their spatial controllability remains an open challenge. Here, the authors devise a method to create arrays of quantum emitters in WSe2 and WS2, by taking advantage of the strain distribution induced by a nanopatterned silica substrate.

    • Carmen Palacios-Berraquero
    • , Dhiren M. Kara
    •  & Mete Atatüre

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