Topological defects articles within Nature Materials

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• Article
  19 February 2024 | Open Access

  Spatially reconfigurable antiferromagnetic states in topologically rich free-standing nanomembranes

  Topological antiferromagnetic states are generated and spatially reconfigured in free-standing crystalline membranes of haematite through strain design.

  • Hariom Jani
  • , Jack Harrison
  •  & Paolo G. Radaelli

• News & Views | 28 December 2023

  Imaging the twist of antiferromagnetic merons in a blood-red iron oxide

  The antiferromagnetic material haematite, named for its blood-red colour, hosts swirling spin vortices termed merons. The rotation sense of such antiferromagnetic vortices has now been imaged in real space.

  • Leonie Spitz
  •  & Max Hirschberger

• Article
  05 December 2023 | Open Access

  Revealing emergent magnetic charge in an antiferromagnet with diamond quantum magnetometry

  Diamond quantum magnetometry is utilized to directly read the vorticity of antiferromagnetic spin textures through coupled multi-polar emergent magnetic charge distributions.

  • Anthony K. C. Tan
  • , Hariom Jani
  •  & Mete Atatüre

• Article
  02 October 2023 | Open Access

  Defeating depolarizing fields with artificial flux closure in ultrathin ferroelectrics

  Ferroelectric dead layers can form at perovskite interfaces—a major challenge in integrating oxide thin films into devices. Here, by depositing an in-plane-polarized epitaxial buffer layer of Bi₅FeTi₃O₁₅, out-of-plane polarization is demonstrated in ultrathin films down to the single-unit-cell level.

  • Elzbieta Gradauskaite
  • , Quintin N. Meier
  •  & Morgan Trassin

• Article
  06 July 2023 | Open Access

  Light-induced hexatic state in a layered quantum material

  The authors report the emergence of a transient hexatic state during laser-induced transformation between two charge-density wave (CDW) phases in a thin film of the CDW material 1T-TaS₂.

  • Till Domröse
  • , Thomas Danz
  •  & Claus Ropers

• Article | 01 December 2022

  Topological steering of light by nematic vortices and analogy to cosmic strings

  Liquid crystal (LC) applications typically rely on defining the non-topological spatial patterns of the optical axis. Here, the authors demonstrate the topological steering of light by LC nematic vortices, futher establishing an analogy between topological light steering by LC vortices and cosmic strings.

  • Cuiling Meng
  • , Jin-Sheng Wu
  •  & Ivan I. Smalyukh

• Article | 21 March 2022

  Topological Wannier cycles induced by sub-unit-cell artificial gauge flux in a sonic crystal

  Gauge fields are essential for detecting and controlling quantum dynamical systems, but their potential has yet to be fully exploited. Here, the authors insert a single-unit-cell synthetic gauge flux into a sonic crystal with the gauge phase ranging from 0 to 2π, leading to topological Wannier cycles.

  • Zhi-Kang Lin
  • , Ying Wu
  •  & Jian-Hua Jiang

• Article | 10 February 2022

  Integer topological defects organize stresses driving tissue morphogenesis

  Integer topological defects promote cellular self-organization, leading to the formation of complex cellular assemblies that trigger cell differentiation and the formation of swirling cellular pillars once differentiation is inhibited. These findings suggest that integer topological defects are important modulators of cellular differentiation and tissue morphogenesis.

  • Pau Guillamat
  • , Carles Blanch-Mercader
  •  & Aurélien Roux

• Article | 22 April 2021

  Electronic properties of the bulk and surface states of Fe_1+yTe_1−xSe_x

  The compositional dependence of magnetic, superconducting and topological surface states on an iron-based superconductor is reported.

  • Yangmu Li
  • , Nader Zaki
  •  & Igor A. Zaliznyak

• Article | 25 January 2021

  Room-temperature antiskyrmions and sawtooth surface textures in a non-centrosymmetric magnet with S₄ symmetry

  Antiskyrmions had only been observed in a few Heusler compounds with D_2d symmetry. Here a new material, Fe_1.9Ni_0.9Pd_0.2P, in a different symmetry class (S₄ symmetry) is reported to host antiskyrmions, as well as sawtooth surface textures and skyrmions.

  • Kosuke Karube
  • , Licong Peng
  •  & Yasujiro Taguchi

• Article | 01 June 2020

  Polar meron lattice in strained oxide ferroelectrics

  Merons are topological structures, but these have yet to be directly observed in ferroelectrics. Here, by epitaxially straining PbTiO₃ on a SmScO₃ substrate, electron microscopy and phase-field modelling allow the morphology and distribution of merons to be observed.

  • Y. J. Wang
  • , Y. P. Feng
  •  & X. L. Ma

• Letter | 03 February 2020

  Black phosphorus as a bipolar pseudospin semiconductor

  Anisotropic honeycomb crystal of black phosphorous is found to have pseudospin polarization greater than 95% at room temperature, attributed to the merging of Dirac cones. This bipolar pseudospin semiconductor may be useful for pseudospintronics.

  • Sung Won Jung
  • , Sae Hee Ryu
  •  & Keun Su Kim

• Letter | 18 June 2018

  Observation of magnetic vortex pairs at room temperature in a planar α-Fe₂O₃/Co heterostructure

  Magnetic vortices formed in antiferromagnetic haematite and imprinted on a Co ferromagnetic over-layer have been observed using X-ray magnetic linear and circular dichroism photoemission electron microscopy. These vortex pairs can be manipulated by the application of magnetic fields.

  • F. P. Chmiel
  • , N. Waterfield Price
  •  & P. G. Radaelli