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Oxide glasses can be intrinsically toughened by forming crystal-like, medium-range order clusters, which transform inversely to the amorphous state under stress, exciting multiple shear bands for plastic deformation.
Self-healing behaviour in a nanotwinned diamond composite, at room temperature, has been quantitatively evaluated through tensile testing. The phenomenon is shown to arise from a transition of atomic interactions from repulsion to attraction and the formation of nanoscale diamond ‘osteoblasts’, in analogy to the process of bone healing in living organisms.
Inspired by valley pseudospins in two-dimensional materials, high-quality-factor (high-Q) spin–valley states were created through the photonic Rashba-type spin splitting of a bound state in the continuum. This approach enabled the construction of a coherent and controllable spin-optical laser using monolayer-integrated spin–valley microcavities without requiring magnetic fields or cryogenic temperatures.
Using the van der Waals crystal Sb2O3 as a buffer layer enables the growth of high-κ dielectrics on two-dimensional materials via atomic layer deposition.
In a non-collinear antiferromagnet, elementary spins rotate with opposite handedness with respect to the collective octupole magnetic moment when stirred by spin currents.
By optimizing the molecular organization of blue-emitting organic semiconductors, the vulnerability of the materials to extrinsic impurities that cause charge trapping, such as oxygen and water, is strongly reduced. Steric shielding of the electron-transporting core is shown to increase the electron transport by several orders of magnitude.
Amorphization can be an additional mechanism to assist plastic deformation in crystalline materials, providing a strategy to improve the load-bearing ability of brittle materials.
By tracking the electrochromic doping front, a hole-limited electrochemical doping mechanism is discovered in organic mixed ionic–electronic conductors.
This Perspective provides an overview on the emergent field of colloidal robotics, discussing recent developments on colloidal and micrometre-sized particles that can perform functions such as sensing, communication, computation and motion.
Pressure sensing is challenging in liquid environments, where typical solid-state sensors do not perform well. A sensor with solid–liquid–liquid–gas multiphasic interfaces — its design inspired by the lotus leaf, and in which a trapped air layer modulates capacitance changes with pressure — is shown to achieve near-ideal pressure sensing and is well suited to liquid environments.
By means of a precise folding–tearing process, screw dislocations with helical cores — appearing in pairs and taking on a DNA-like double-helix structure — are engineered to control the growth of twisted bilayer graphene.
Piezoresponse microscopy and spectroscopy reveal the inextricable role of surface electrochemistry in stabilizing and controlling ferroelectricity in doped hafnia.
Photochromic molecular crystal arrays aligned in the micropores of a polymer membrane show high-performance actuation when stimulated by light. These soft composites might find applications in soft robotic devices.
Metamaterial adhesives with nonlinear cut architectures provide strong and reversible adhesion, directionality and spatially programmable adhesive strength.
An electric field is found to be capable of controlling dislocation movement in semiconducting zinc sulfide, as observed in real time by in situ transmission electron microscopy.
Detailed transmission electron microscopy imaging of the dynamics of domain walls in twisted van der Waals ferroelectrics is obtained, capturing the transition to a hysteretic response.
By monitoring the lattice dynamics of single-crystal argyrodite Ag8SnSe6 through the superionic transition, low thermal conductivity and ionic transport are found to arise from extreme phonon anharmonicity.
