Structure of solids and liquids articles within Nature

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Our experimental proof of chiral phonons demonstrates a degree of freedom in condensed matter that is of fundamental importance and opens the door to exploration of emergent phenomena based on chiral bosons.

    • Hiroki Ueda
    • , Mirian García-Fernández
    •  & Urs Staub

  • Article |

    The nanostructured diamond capsule process with the inert gases solid argon and neon is demonstrated, where the trapped volatile gases could sustain their high-pressure states without confinement of conventional high-pressure vessels, opening up the possibility of in-depth investigations of high-pressure phenomena.

    • Zhidan Zeng
    • , Jianguo Wen
    •  & Qiaoshi Zeng

  • Article |

    Preparing amorphous phases of carbon with mostly sp3 bonding in bulk is challenging, but macroscopic samples that are nearly pure sp3 are synthesized here by heating fullerenes at high pressure.

    • Yuchen Shang
    • , Zhaodong Liu
    •  & Bingbing Liu

  • Article |

    A study describes the synthesis, structural characterization and formation mechanism of a paracrystalline state of diamond, adding an unusual form of diamond to the family of carbon-based materials.

    • Hu Tang
    • , Xiaohong Yuan
    •  & Huiyang Gou

  • Article |

    Amorphous–amorphous phase transitions in silicon dioxide are shown to proceed through a sequence of percolation transitions, a process that has relevance to a range of important liquid and glassy systems.

    • A. Hasmy
    • , S. Ispas
    •  & B. Hehlen

  • Article |

    Model patchy colloids with directional bonding are designed that assemble into icosahedral quasicrystals through the propagation of an icosahedral network of bonds and may be realized using DNA origami particles.

    • Eva G. Noya
    • , Chak Kui Wong
    •  & Jonathan P. K. Doye

  • Article |

    X-ray diffraction measurements of solid carbon compressed to pressures of about two terapascals (approximately twenty million atmospheres) find that carbon retains a diamond structure even under these extreme conditions.

    • A. Lazicki
    • , D. McGonegle
    •  & J. S. Wark

  • Article |

    Machine learning models enable atomistic simulations of phase transitions in amorphous silicon, predict electronic fingerprints, and show that the pressure-induced crystallization occurs over three distinct stages.

    • Volker L. Deringer
    • , Noam Bernstein
    •  & Stephen R. Elliott

  • Article |

    Laser-generated high-harmonic emission is used to image the valence potential and electron density in magnesium fluoride and calcium fluoride at the picometre scale, enabling direct probing of material properties.

    • H. Lakhotia
    • , H. Y. Kim
    •  & E. Goulielmakis

  • Article |

    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

  • Letter |

    X-ray diffraction measurements of solid hydrogen provide crystallographic information for high-pressure phases of hydrogen and transitions between them, suggesting a series of isostructural transitions under compression before band closure and metallization.

    • Cheng Ji
    • , Bing Li
    •  & Ho-Kwang Mao

  • Letter |

    Observation of the collective mode responding to the superfluid stiffness—the low-energy Goldstone mode—provides direct evidence for phase rigidity, which is a key signature of supersolidity in an ultracold quantum gas.

    • Mingyang Guo
    • , Fabian Böttcher
    •  & Tilman Pfau

  • Letter |

    The atomic structure of H2O is documented at several million atmospheres of pressure and temperatures of several thousand degrees, revealing shockwave-induced ultrafast crystallization and a novel water ice phase, ice XVIII, with exotic superionic properties.

    • Marius Millot
    • , Federica Coppari
    •  & Jon H. Eggert

  • Letter |

    Colossal barocaloric effects are observed in the plastic crystal neopentylglycol and found to originate from the extensive molecular orientational disorder, giant compressibility and highly anharmonic lattice dynamics of the material.

    • Bing Li
    • , Yukinobu Kawakita
    •  & Zhidong Zhang

  • Letter |

    The relaxation dynamics of granular materials is more like that of complex fluids than that of thermal glass-forming systems, owing to the absence of the ‘cage effect’.

    • Binquan Kou
    • , Yixin Cao
    •  & Yujie Wang

  • Letter |

    The limits of dislocation-mediated metal plasticity are studied by using in situ computational microscopy to reduce the enormous amount of data from fully dynamic atomistic simulations into a manageable form.

    • Luis A. Zepeda-Ruiz
    • , Alexander Stukowski
    •  & Vasily V. Bulatov

  • Letter |

    WebSpontaneous translational symmetry breaking is experimentally observed in a dipolar Bose–Einstein condensate of dysprosium atoms, whereby an instability causes a spontaneous transition from an unstructured superfluid to an ordered arrangement of droplet crystals, which is surprisingly long-lived.

    • Holger Kadau
    • , Matthias Schmitt
    •  & Tilman Pfau

  • Letter |

    Raman spectroscopy of three isotopes of hydrogen under very high compression yields evidence of a new phase of hydrogen—phase V—which could potentially be a precursor to the long-sought non-molecular phase.

    • Philip Dalladay-Simpson
    • , Ross T. Howie
    •  & Eugene Gregoryanz

  • Letter |

    This study shows that metallic glasses can be rejuvenated (taken to higher energy states with more plasticity) by thermally cycling them at relatively low temperatures (well below the glass transition temperature); this is attributed to the effect of intrinsic structural inhomogeneities in the glassy state, which translate into localized internal strains as the temperature is cycled and the different regions expand and contract by different amounts.

    • S. V. Ketov
    • , Y. H. Sun
    •  & A. L. Greer

  • Review Article |

    Although classical crystallography is insufficient to determine disordered structure in crystals, correlated disorder does nevertheless contain clear crystallographic signatures that map to the type of disorder, which we are learning to decipher.

    • David A. Keen
    •  & Andrew L. Goodwin

  • Letter |

    Femtosecond X-ray diffraction and ab initio density functional theory calculations are used to determine the crystal structure of YBa2Cu3O6.5 undergoing optically driven, nonlinear lattice excitation above the transition temperature of 52 kelvin, under which conditions the electronic structure of the material changes in such a way as to favour superconductivity.

    • R. Mankowsky
    • , A. Subedi
    •  & A. Cavalleri

  • Letter |

    The unusual structures of quasicrystals, such as the 18-fold symmetry observed in polymer micelles, lack the repeating cell pattern of conventional hard crystals; here their origin is shown to be an extension of Penrose tiling with a simple, generic interparticle interaction.

    • T. Dotera
    • , T. Oshiro
    •  & P. Ziherl

  • Letter |

    The structure of molten basalt up to 60 GPa by means of in situ X-ray diffraction is described, with the coordination of silicon increasing from four under ambient conditions to six at 35 GPa, and subsequent reduced melt compressibility, which seems to affect siderophile-element partitioning.

    • Chrystèle Sanloup
    • , James W. E. Drewitt
    •  & Wolfgang Morgenroth

  • News & Views |

    Interacting electrons that are confined to move in a one-dimensional structure do not simply jam together like cars in rush hour. Inelastic X-ray scattering shows that the electrons act as if they split into separate fractional entities. See Letter p.82

    • Ralph Claessen

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