Articles

The metal monochalcogenides are a group of van der Waals layered semiconductors with ultra-high plasticity. It is now revealed that their plasticity is attributed to the ability to transform their stacking order or phases, coupled with the concurrent generation of a micro-crack network.

Interfacial reactions between lithium and anodes are not well understood in an all-solid environment. For the silicon anode we now demonstrate that, rather than strong Li–Si alloying at the conventional solid–liquid interface, the lithiation reaction of micrometre-sized Si can be greatly constricted at the solid–solid interface.

Employing light-transformable polymers, multiple physical unclonable functions are demonstrated within a single device with all-optical reversible reconfigurability. Such devices may enable quantum secure authentication and nonlinear cryptographic key generation applications.

Current organic proton detectors have poor detection sensitivities due to low light yields and limited radiation toleration. Here the authors report a perovskite nanocrystal-based transmissive thin scintillator that can detect seven protons per second, enabled by radiative emission from biexcitons.

Biological tissues are extremely water rich but remain mechanically stiff, behaviour that is difficult to recapitulate in synthetic materials. Here the authors design a hydrogel/sponge hybrid material driven by a self-organized network of cyano-p-aramid nanofibres that combines these properties for biofunctional materials.

The authors utilize both static and ultrafast terahertz conductivity spectroscopy to address the character of the superconducting state of infinite-layer nickelates.

The authors demonstrate the tunability of moiré potential and emergent moiré exciton Rydberg states in a monolayer transition metal dichalcogenide governed by an adjacent twisted bilayer graphene near the magic angle with gate-tunable local charge density.

The authors imprint a moiré potential on a remote monolayer semiconductor through the moiré potential created in a remote MoSe₂/WS₂ moiré bilayer. The imprinted moiré potential enables gate-controlled generation of flat bands and correlated insulating states in the targeted monolayer.

Autonomous assembly, reconfiguration and disassembly are observed in living aggregates, but are difficult to replicate in synthetic soft matter. Here mechanically interlocked responsive ribbons form transient viscoelastic solids for the on-demand assembly of functional materials.

Rhenium chalcohalide cluster compounds are promising photoluminescent materials. Here the authors report a new material in this family, Rb₆Re₆S₈I₈, which shows broad photoluminescence (PL) range, high PL quantum yield and long PL lifetime.

Employing nonlinear, time-resolved terahertz spectroscopy to study condensate dynamics on Ta₂NiSe₅—a narrow-bandgap semiconductor and putative excitonic insulator—the authors reveal enhanced terahertz reflectivity upon photoexcitation and condensation-like temperature dependence below the structural transition critical temperature.

The authors combine laser excitation and scanning tunnelling spectroscopy to visualize the electron and hole distributions in photoexcited moiré excitons in twisted bilayer WS₂. This photocurrent tunnelling microscopy approach enables the study of photoexcited non-equilibrium moiré phenomena at atomic scales.

The self-assembly of metallic nanoparticles on oxide supports via metal exsolution relies on dopant transport, but strong electrostatic gradients and space charges typically control the properties of surfaces. The surface–dopant interaction is shown to be the main determining factor for the exsolution kinetics of nickel in a perovskite system.

Porosity of zeolitic imidazolate frameworks can be preserved beyond glass transition and melt processing. Here centimetre-scale porous glasses are demonstrated, whereas liquid processing enables fine-tuning of the size of the gas-transporting channels for molecular sieving.

Depositing textured functional materials on transparent conducting oxides remains a challenge. We demonstrate the formation of a coherent interface between a set of functional oxides and fluorine-doped-tin-oxide-based transparent conducting oxide substrate despite the lattice mismatch, owing to dimensional and chemical matching of oxygen sublattices at the interface.

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

Piezoelectrics have longitudinal and transverse piezoelectric coefficients that are opposite in sign. Here, by tuning the interface inversion asymmetry in heterostructures, auxetic systems with positive longitudinal and transverse coefficients are realized, with expansion or contraction along all directions in an electric field.

The authors present magnetotransport measurements to demonstrate multistep magnetization switching in orthogonally twisted CrSBr ferromagnetic monolayers.

Monolithic 3D integration of electronics based on fully 2D materials is demonstrated in the performance of artificial intelligence tasks.

Optically stimulated vibrational control for materials has the potential to improve the performance of optoelectronic devices. The vibrational control of FAPbBr₃ perovskite solar cells has been demonstrated, where the fast dynamics of coupling between cations and inorganic sublattice may suppress non-radiative recombinations in perovskites, leading to reduced voltage losses.