Physical sciences articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Information Theoretically-secure deterministic programs that self-destruct after a single use are known to be impossible to implement. Here, the authors use quantum states to implement a probabilistic version of this fundamental cryptographic primitive, and provide a proof-of-principle implementation with single photons.

    • Marie-Christine Roehsner
    • , Joshua A. Kettlewell
    •  & Philip Walther

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Understanding how nanoparticle superstructures respond to external stimuli is of importance to their potential application. Here, the authors demonstrate the use of cryo-transmission electron microscopy for monitoring and manipulating movement within nanoparticle-loaded dendrimicelle superstructure thin films upon irradiation with an electron beam.

    • Jan Bart ten Hove
    • , Fijs W. B. van Leeuwen
    •  & Aldrik H. Velders

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The software Optimer has aided the programmable one-pot oligosaccharide synthesis with a library of 50 Building BLocks (BBLs). Here, the authors expanded Optimer's validated and virtual libraries of BBLs and developed Auto-CHO, a software which allows the one-pot programmable synthesis of more complex glycans.

    • Cheng-Wei Cheng
    • , Yixuan Zhou
    •  & Chi-Huey Wong

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In complex oxides, oxygen octahedra are major structural motifs and their tilts sensitively determine the material’s physical properties. Exploiting Coherent Bragg Rod Analysis enables 3D mapping of complex tilt patterns and reveals the means to control polarization through them in CaTiO3 thin films.

    • Yakun Yuan
    • , Yanfu Lu
    •  & Venkatraman Gopalan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The edge of the thin sheets of two dimensional organic-inorganic hybrid perovskite crystals shows exotic physical properties that remain unexplored. Here Cheng et al. make electronic devices and study their transport properties, photoresponses and humid sensitivities which show large anisotropy.

    • Bin Cheng
    • , Ting-You Li
    •  & Jr-Hau He

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Here, the authors explore the ultrafast photodynamics of methyl anthranilate. From the quantum beat behavior, the authors find evidence for ultrafast energy redistribution processes which hinder excited state relaxation, making methyl anthranilate a poor choice for a sunscreen chemical filter.

    • Natércia d. N. Rodrigues
    • , Neil C. Cole-Filipiak
    •  & Vasilios G. Stavros

  • Article
    | Open Access

    H2 roaming is associated with H3+ formation when certain organic molecules are exposed to strong laser fields. Here, the mechanistic details and time-resolved dynamics of H3+ formation from a series of alcohols were obtained and found that the product yield decreases as the carbon chain length increases.

    • Nagitha Ekanayake
    • , Travis Severt
    •  & Marcos Dantus

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The photoresponse of graphene-based photodetectors is dominated by photovoltaic and photothermoelectric effects. Here, the authors leverage strongly localised plasmonic heating of graphene carriers to detect a second photothermoelectric effect occurring across a homogeneous channel in the presence of an electronic temperature gradient.

    • Viktoryia Shautsova
    • , Themistoklis Sidiropoulos
    •  & Rupert F. Oulton

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Achieving high thermopower in liquid-state thermogalvanic cells is vital to realize a low-cost technology solution for thermal-to-electrical energy conversion. Here, the authors present aqueous thermogalvanic cells based on modified electrolyte with enhanced Seebeck coefficient and thermopower.

    • Jiangjiang Duan
    • , Guang Feng
    •  & Jun Zhou

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The potential of electromechanical sensors has been limited by low volumetric density in sensing sites. Here, the authors demonstrate ultrasensitive pressure and strain sensors using ZnO microparticles that have high-aspect ratio and high-density nanostructured spines mimicking bristles in insects.

    • Bing Yin
    • , Xiaomeng Liu
    •  & Jun Yao

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Ionic liquid electrolytes can impart increased operational voltage and energy density in supercapacitors, but water may diminish performance. Here the authors show that the hydrophilicity/hydrophobicity of ionic liquids can influence electrosorption of water and ultimately the supercapacitor performance.

    • Sheng Bi
    • , Runxi Wang
    •  & Guang Feng

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Auxeticity in synthetic materials is realised by geometrical design of porous structures rather than on a molecular level. Here the authors demonstrate auxeticity in a non-porous liquid crystal elastomer overcoming porosity related weakening of the material and opening a pathway to designed molecular auxetic materials.

    • D. Mistry
    • , S. D. Connell
    •  & H. F. Gleeson

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The measure of microscopic forces is currently dominated by optical methods requiring parameter-based analyses and long data acquisitions. This work describes a fast and parameter-free method that can characterize both the conservative and non-conservative force fields acting on Brownian particles.

    • Laura Pérez García
    • , Jaime Donlucas Pérez
    •  & Giovanni Volpe

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Electron transport chains rely on interactions between redox proteins, but the distance-dependence of the electron transfer rate through the solution is unknown. Here, the authors show that the current between two redox protein partners occurs at long distances and is electrochemically gated.

    • Anna Lagunas
    • , Alejandra Guerra-Castellano
    •  & Pau Gorostiza

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Active matter describes a group of interacting units showing collective motions by constantly consuming energy from the environment, but inertia has largely been overlooked in this context. Scholz et al. show how important it can be by characterizing the dynamics of self-propelled particles in a model system.

    • Christian Scholz
    • , Soudeh Jahanshahi
    •  & Hartmut Löwen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Diversity is believed to raise effectiveness and performance but it contains many aspects. Here the authors studied the relationship between research impact and five classes of diversity and found that ethnic diversity had the strongest correlation with scientific impact.

    • Bedoor K. AlShebli
    • , Talal Rahwan
    •  & Wei Lee Woon

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Modern microscopes can generate high volumes of 3D images, driving difficulties in data handling and processing. Here, the authors present a content-adaptive image representation as an alternative to standard pixels that goes beyond data compression to overcome storage, memory, and processing bottlenecks.

    • Bevan L. Cheeseman
    • , Ulrik Günther
    •  & Ivo F. Sbalzarini

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The large-scale production of CS2 presents both environmental and biological hazards, yet adsorbents capable of CS2 capture remain scarcely explored. Here, Long and colleagues demonstrate that CS2 is adsorbed in diamine-appended metal–organic frameworks through a cooperative and chemically specific insertion process.

    • C. Michael McGuirk
    • , Rebecca L. Siegelman
    •  & Jeffrey R. Long

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Alignment and orientation of the molecules allows studying the photon-molecule interactions in greater detail. Here the authors demonstrate the three-dimensional orientation of SO2 molecules in using COLTRIMS and orthogonally polarized laser pulses but in the absence of DC field.

    • Kang Lin
    • , Ilia Tutunnikov
    •  & Jian Wu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Minimizing contact effects in organic semiconductor-based devices is a key step toward the development of a low-cost technology for next-generation electronics. Here, the authors reduce contact resistance in organic devices by engineering electrodes with high work function surface domains.

    • Zachary A. Lamport
    • , Katrina J. Barth
    •  & Oana D. Jurchescu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Magnetic reconnection is the process of releasing energy by magnetized and space plasma. Here the authors report experimental observation of magnetic reconnection in laser-produced plasma and the role of electron scaling on reconnection.

    • Y. Kuramitsu
    • , T. Moritaka
    •  & M. Hoshino

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Polymer dynamics at entangled conditions has generally been simplified as motions governed by the two ends of each polymer chain. Abadi et al. characterize linear and cyclic dsDNA molecules with high resolution, revealing position-dependent chain motions which cannot be described by the reptation theory.

    • Maram Abadi
    • , Maged F. Serag
    •  & Satoshi Habuchi

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Superchiral light can be utilized to promote asymmetric photochemical reactions. Here the authors show that superchiral light imparts greater chiral bias to trigger asymmetric photo-polymerization reactions from initially achiral diacetylene monomers and enhanced optical dissymmetry in polydiacetylene films.

    • Chenlu He
    • , Guang Yang
    •  & Gang Zou

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Tracking the deformation of opaque materials under their surfaces is fascinating, yet a challenging task, which has been constrained to static conditions or model materials to date. Here, Baker et al. develop X-ray rheography to reconstruct three-dimensional velocity fields in general granular media.

    • James Baker
    • , François Guillard
    •  & Itai Einav

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The fast and accurate determination of molecular properties is particularly crucial in drug discovery. Here, the authors employ supervised machine learning to treat differential mobility spectrometry – mass spectrometry data for ten classes of drug candidates and predict several condensed-phase properties.

    • Stephen W. C. Walker
    • , Ahdia Anwar
    •  & W. Scott Hopkins

  • Article
    | Open Access

    While magnesium rechargeable batteries could combine high energy density with low cost and good safety, the extremely sluggish reaction kinetics remains to be overcome. Here, the authors show that by using solvated Mg2+ intercalation, the high charge density of bare Mg2+ may be effectively mitigated.

    • Zhenyou Li
    • , Xiaoke Mu
    •  & Maximilian Fichtner

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Methylammonium lead triiodide perovskite based solar cells have attracted lots of attention but many physical characteristics of this material remain elusive. Here Li et al. reveal the role of defects in the carrier recombination dynamics in photoluminescence experiments and present a model to describe it.

    • Cheng Li
    • , Antonio Guerrero
    •  & Juan Bisquert

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Layered NaxMnO2 cathode suffers from structural instability and sluggish kinetics. Here the authors show a method to yield monoclinic NaMn2−y−δ(OH)2y, a new polymorph of Na-birnessite with maximum Na occupancy and enlarged interlayer spacing, enabling outstanding cyclability and rate performance.

    • Hui Xia
    • , Xiaohui Zhu
    •  & Ying Shirley Meng

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Artificial neural networks can emulate the human vision because of their spike-based operation by employing memristors as synapses. Here, Seo et al. integrate synaptic and optical sensing functions in a single heterostructure, which enables accurate and energy-efficient recognition of colored patterns.

    • Seunghwan Seo
    • , Seo-Hyeon Jo
    •  & Jin-Hong Park

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Typically, preparation of the polymer precursors α,ω-dinitriles requires hydrogen cyanide. Here, the authors use aldoxime hydratase to produce adiponitrile and related aliphatic linear dinitriles under ambient conditions starting from readily available substrates without needing hydrogen cyanide.

    • Tobias Betke
    • , Manuel Maier
    •  & Harald Gröger

  • Review Article
    | Open Access

    Transcranial electrical stimulation techniques, such as tDCS and tACS, are popular tools for neuroscience and clinical therapy, but how low-intensity current might modulate brain activity remains unclear. In this review, the authors review the evidence on mechanisms of transcranial electrical stimulation.

    • Anli Liu
    • , Mihály Vöröslakos
    •  & György Buzsáki

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Radial diffusion is the only mechanism considered to accelerate trapped electrons to relativistic energies in Saturn’s magnetic field, forming radiation belts. Here the authors show another mechanism, electron acceleration via Doppler shifted cyclotron resonant interaction with Z-mode waves, which can form radiation belts inside the orbit of Enceladus.

    • E. E. Woodfield
    • , R. B. Horne
    •  & W. S. Kurth

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Supersonic particle impacts can cause permanent damage to space vehicles and satellites, but how exactly remains unclear. Here, the authors visualise for the first time the high impact of single tin microparticles on a tin substrate and show erosion of ductile metallic materials is melt-driven.

    • Mostafa Hassani-Gangaraj
    • , David Veysset
    •  & Christopher A. Schuh

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Silicon-based contaminants are ubiquitous in natural graphite, and they are thus expected to be present in exfoliated graphene. Here, the authors show that such impurities play a non-negligible role in graphene-based devices, and use high-purity parent graphite to boost the performance of graphene sensors and supercapacitor microelectrodes.

    • Rouhollah Jalili
    • , Dorna Esrafilzadeh
    •  & Gordon G. Wallace

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The race to produce a quantum computer has driven the development of many different qubit designs with different benefits and drawbacks. Noiri et al. demonstrate a hybrid device with two coupled semiconductor spin qubits of different designs, which should allow each qubit’s advantages to be exploited.

    • A. Noiri
    • , T. Nakajima
    •  & S. Tarucha

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Nanosized ceria has conventionally been thought to have a cubic fluorite structure. Here, the authors use a combination of experiments and simulations to show that oxygen vacancies in ceria promote a charge-transfer induced phase transition from tetragonal to cubic.

    • He Zhu
    • , Chao Yang
    •  & Xianran Xing

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Natural genetic transformation in bacteria requires DNA binding at the surface of competent cells. Here, Mirouze et al. show that wall teichoic acids are specifically produced or modified during competence in Bacillus subtilis and promote (directly or indirectly) DNA binding at the cell surface.

    • Nicolas Mirouze
    • , Cécile Ferret
    •  & Rut Carballido-López

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Sample orientation is crucial to ensure optimal image quality in light microscopy. Here the authors enable multi-axis orientation of fixed mouse embryos and shrimp, and live zebrafish embryos and larvae by introducing magnetic beads and rotating the sample with a magnetic field in a microscope.

    • Frederic Berndt
    • , Gopi Shah
    •  & Jan Huisken

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Metal–organic framework glasses have emerged as a new family of melt-quenched glass, but have yet to display the accessible porosity of their crystalline counterparts. Here, Bennett and colleagues report that glasses derived from ZIF-76 parent materials possess 4 – 8 Å pores and exhibit reversible gas adsorption.

    • Chao Zhou
    • , Louis Longley
    •  & Thomas D. Bennett

  • Review Article
    | Open Access

    Organic−inorganic metal halide perovskite solar cells possess high efficiency and low processing cost but suffer poor stability. Here Gao et al. review the recent progress on the 2D–3D mixed perovskites and suggest that greatly improved stability can be achieved without compromising the efficiency.

    • Peng Gao
    • , Abd Rashid Bin Mohd Yusoff
    •  & Mohammad Khaja Nazeeruddin

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