Articles

Solvation dynamics at picosecond timescales critically affect charge transport in aqueous systems, but conflicting values have been reported for organic electrolytes. Lifetimes on the order of 1 ns for mixtures of organic polymer and lithium salt exhibiting ultraslow dynamics of solvation shell break-up are now reported.

Fast charging is driving extensive research on enhanced electrodes for high-performance electrochemical capacitors and micro-supercapacitors. Thick ruthenium nitride pseudocapacitive films are shown to exhibit enhanced capacitance with a time constant of less than 6 s.

Controlling substrate elasticity during physical vapour deposition allows access to high-density stable glasses that would otherwise be formed under prohibitively slow deposition conditions on rigid substrates.

Sequential drinks of crosslinker and polymer solutions form a tough hydrogel in the stomach, enabling delivery of drugs and biologics in this harsh chemical environment.

Understanding mesoscale structure and dynamics in organic mixed ionic–electronic conductors is crucial. Mesoscale strain kinetics and structural hysteresis have been studied, and they uncover the coupling between charge carrier dynamics and mesoscale order in organic mixed ionic–electronic conductors.

Angle-resolved transport measurements on twisted trilayer graphene reveal evidence for a variety of correlated states with spontaneous symmetry breaking, and offer evidence of momentum polarization.

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

Active and stable catalysts to accelerate the transition from fossil fuel to renewable feedstocks, reduce energy consumption and minimize environmental footprints are needed. Electrocatalysts based on copper nanocrystals encapsulated in hybrid alumina shells stable against structural reconstruction during CO₂ electroreduction are reported.

A nanoscale polymer layer formed by mucins at the surface of tumour cells protects them against immune cell attack. This shield can be circumvented through immune cell engineering, using chimeric antigen receptors to stimulate natural killer and T cells or by tethering glycocalyx-editing enzymes to immune cells.

Optically detected magnetic resonance (ODMR) is an efficient mechanism for quantum sensors and has been discovered in a few systems, but all have technological limitations. Here the authors report room temperature ODMR in single defects in GaN, promising for integrated quantum sensing applications.

Light-induced artificial goosebumps on liquid crystal elastomer skin are used to precisely manipulate passive microstructures, achieving a localized and controllable system for programmable micromachines.

Precession phase of a magnetic material is shown to be recalled over timescales far exceeding that of Gilbert damping.

A large Josephson diode effect has been reported at liquid-nitrogen temperatures in twisted flakes of Bi₂Sr₂CaCu₂O_8+δ.

Exploiting optical multimodal confinement, the deep-subwavelength confinement of hyperbolic phonon polaritons is demonstrated in isotopically pure hexagonal boron nitride, enabling nanoscale polariton manipulation.

Developing active and stable atomically dispersed catalysts is challenging because of weak non-specific interactions between catalytically active metal atoms and supports. A general method for synthesizing these catalysts via photochemical defect tuning for controlling oxygen-vacancy dynamics is proposed.

Oxides with a face-centred cubic anion sublattice are generally not considered as solid-state electrolytes. Li superionic conductivity in face-centred cubic oxides with face-sharing Li configurations have now been created through cation over-stoichiometry in rocksalt-type lattices via excess Li.

Intense light pulses can induce symmetry breaking, as for the generation of ferroelectricity in SrTiO₃. Using ultrafast X-ray diffuse scattering at a free-electron laser, nonlinear phonon interactions that occur on such mid-IR excitation are observed, with a theory for the dynamics presented.

Soft building blocks tend to be near spherical, limiting their packing structures to those found in metallic systems. Here the authors report the spontaneous generation of highly deformed mesoatoms using molecular pentagons and observe Frank–Kasper phases not found in metal alloys.

A general process for a room-temperature, homogeneous Suzuki–Miyaura-type polymerization is reported, demonstrating a route for the scalable production of device-quality conjugated polymers.

Although silicon anodes are promising for solid-state batteries, they still suffer from poor electrochemical performance. Chemo-mechanical failure mechanisms of composite Si|Li₆PS₅Cl and solid-electrolyte-free silicon anodes are now revealed and should help in designing improved electrodes.