Reviews & Analysis

A single transport function has been developed to describe the temperature and energy dependence of charge transport in insulating, semiconducting and metallic polymers.

The half-Heusler GdPtBi is found to show transport and calorimetric signatures of the existence of Weyl fermions under the application of a magnetic field. The half-Heusler alloys form a big family of tunable compounds that may substantially enlarge the number of Weyl semimetals known.

Confocal microscopy and computational analysis, now used for measuring microscale stresses in colloidal crystals, could be developed for investigation of amorphous materials, crystal melting, and mechanical properties of tissues.

Self-propelled Janus particles with externally regulated anisotropic interactions can be made to swarm, cluster and form slithering chains.

Computer networks, trained with data from delayed-fluorescence materials that have been successfully used in organic light-emitting diodes, facilitate the high-speed prediction of good emitters for display and lighting applications.

Scaling of the phonon damping with the wavevector in glasses is found to be different from the traditionally assumed Rayleigh scattering, and related to surprising, long-range correlations in the local elasticity matrix.

Graphene is used as a capping sheet to synthesize 2D gallium nitride by means of migration-enhanced encapsulation growth. This technique may allow the stabilization of 2D materials that are not amenable to synthesis by traditional methods.

Drug-loaded liposomes functionalized with proteins from the cell membrane of leukocytes target inflamed tissues without eliciting a substantial immune response.

Zeolite-encaged silver nanoclusters as highly photoluminescent materials.

Strain engineering can tune a manganite film into an antiferromagnetic insulating state whose extreme photo-susceptibility allows for the ordinary ferromagnetic metal state to then be transiently realized.

Ultra-low-power electronic switching of stable exciton–polariton spin states has now been achieved in a semiconductor microcavity. This opens a new route to the integration of spin-based photonics and electronics.

This Review discusses the different, state-of-the-art applications of heterostructures containing at least one layer of a two-dimensional (2D) material, combined with 0D, 1D and 3D nano-objects.

Nanoparticles of gallium deposited on a sapphire substrate, which are now shown to remain stable in a state of solid/liquid coexistence across a temperature window wider than 600 K, may prove useful for studying the properties of solid/liquid interfaces and in plasmonic or catalytic applications.

The discovery of a hypersonic bandgap in spider silk could drive the design of bio-inspired and biocompatible dynamic materials.

Synthetic elastomers designed to mimic the functional properties of human skin show potential applications in cosmetics, topical drug delivery and wound dressings.

Titanium aluminide alloys are lightweight and have attractive properties for high-temperature applications. A new growth method that enables single-crystal production now boosts their mechanical performance.