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Domain walls in ferroelectrics are known to be conductive, but details of the precise mechanism are elusive. Atomic-scale structural and chemical characterization of domain walls in BiFeO3 now reveals a build-up of charged defects.
The interaction of water with TiO2 is crucial for applications such as photocatalytic water splitting. The interfacial structure between water and rutile TiO2 is now shown to consist of an array of hydroxyl molecules with water in the second layer.
Silicon-based photoelectrodes are attractive for solar fuel production, but suffer from vulnerability to corrosion. Using dielectric breakdown, a generic approach to improve the performance of metal-oxide semiconductor photoelectrodes is proposed.
In photosynthesis the oxidation of water is a requirement for providing sufficient protons and electrons for fuel formation. A biphasic water splitting catalyst tailored for integration with high-performance semiconductor photoanodes is now reported.
A new model for collagen intrafibrillar mineralization shows the need for a balance between osmotic equilibrium and electroneutrality to establish Gibbs–Donnan equilibrium.
Mesenchymal stem cells primed on soft silicone substrates suppress fibrogenesis and are desensitized against subsequent mechanical activation in vitro and in vivo.
Plants can be engineered to serve as self-powered pre-concentrators and autosamplers of analytes in ambient groundwater and as infrared communication platforms that can send information to a smartphone.
Heterostructures formed by the magnetic topological insulator Cr-doped (Bi,Sb)2Te and the antiferromagnet CrSb are shown to exhibit emergent interfacial magnetic phenomena that can be tuned with the heterostructure geometry.
The electronic properties of bulk solids composed of zwitterionic tetrathiafulvalene-extended dicarboxylate radicals are investigated, showing highly conducting metallic behaviour in single-component molecular systems having only s and p electrons.
Understanding interactions between water and oxides is crucial for energy storage and photocatalysis. The combined effect of water and electron irradiation on perovskite catalysts results in structural oscillation triggered by gaseous bubbles.
Time-resolved photo-conductance and microwave conductance investigations reveal that methylammonium lead iodide perovskites have an indirect bandgap at temperatures relevant to photovoltaic applications.
The penetration of tissues with syringe needles is a common clinical practice that inevitably results in blood loss at the puncture site. This blood loss can now be eliminated using self-sealing haemostatic needles.
Encapsulation of single-atom and particulate gold within growing zeolite frameworks generates active catalysts with exceptionally high thermal stability.
Calcium ions play a vital role in enabling synaptic plasticity in biological systems. The dynamic behaviour of these ions has now been emulated in a metal atom diffusion-based memristor.
A porous microwell platform that generates large-scale arrays of microparticles with varying shape, size and modulus with high specificity shows applicability in anti-counterfeiting and cell-screening applications.
Experiments and simulations show that resistive forces on surfaces moving through granular matter or cohesive media arise as a consequence of local frictional yielding.
The Rashba effect at the LaAlO3/SrTiO3 interface is shown to enable large and gate-tunable spin-to-charge conversion through the inverse Rashba–Edelstein effect.The spin current is injected, through spin pumping, from a NiFe film.
Studies of the phonon damping mechanism in glasses reveal scaling with the wavevector k which is different from the traditionally assumed Rayleigh scattering. These findings are related to long-range correlations in the local stress.