Reviews & Analysis

Engineered ligand shells on gold nanoclusters utilizing molecular motion improve the thermal conductance between the cluster and the solvent, increasing thermal stability and enhancing performance in the photothermal treatment of cancerous tumours.

Incorporating additives that contain hydrogen-bonding nanochannels creates nanoconfined polymer gels that are highly stretchable, elastic and insensitive to notch propagation.

Processible centimetre-scale porous glasses using zeolitic imidazolate framework (ZIF) materials are developed, while fine-tuning of the processing conditions allows control of pore size and molecular sieving properties.

Orthogonally twisted CrSBr ferromagnetic monolayers with in-plane Ising anisotropies are found to exhibit multistep magnetoresistance switching with a magnetic hysteresis opening. This work emphasizes the role of spin dimensionality in two-dimensional magnets, and the potential of orthogonal and large-twist-angle van der Waals magnets.

Elastic microphase separation controls the characteristic mesoscopic length scale of bulk bicontinuous materials.

An all-electric switch of the persistent electron swirl in a quantum anomalous Hall state enables researchers to flip the electronic chirality of this quantum state.

Using an electrochemical continuous flow cell, nitrogen reduction to ammonia is rigorously demonstrated through a calcium-mediated approach.

By forming a heterostructure interface, and by judicious choice of crystallographic orientation, piezoelectrics are developed that show expansion or contraction along all axes on application of an electric field.

Hybrid organic–inorganic perovskite materials have promise as the photovoltaic technology of the future. A method for spectroscopic optical control reveals how the structural dynamics and vibrations of a perovskite’s organic cations affect the electronic performance of working photovoltaic devices.

Oxidation can degrade the properties and functionality of three-dimensional bulk metallic glasses. However, the formation of percolating oxide networks in metallic glass nanotubes or nanosheets can induce interesting properties, such as a recoverable strain of 10–20% and elastic modulus of 20–30 GPa, which are rarely observed in their bulk counterparts.

Post-infusion poly(ethylene glycol) surface modification of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-engineered T cells and a subcutaneous chemokine-adsorbing hydrogel address cytokine release syndrome and the neurotoxicity side effects of CAR T cell therapy against tumours.

Polymers made by click chemistry with spirocyclic building blocks form membranes that separate the components of crude oil based on molecular size and type, potentially using far less energy than distillation. Key enablers of this separation are moderate levels of polymer dynamic motion and frustrated chain packing.

A compact, time- and energy-efficient computing architecture — based on ferroelectric-defined reconfigurable two-dimensional photodiode arrays — is shown to be capable of in-memory sensing and computing.

Hybridized electron or hole states across semiconducting van der Waals monolayers in heterotrilayer systems enable the emergence of quadrupolar excitons. Quadrupolar excitons, unlike their dipolar counterparts, have a tunable static dipole moment that responds nonlinearly under an applied electric field.

The discovery of passivating agents for perovskite photovoltaics can be an arduous and time-consuming process. Now, a machine-learning model is reported that accelerates the selection of bifunctional pseudo-halide passivators. The identified pseudo-halide passivators were experimentally shown to enhance the performance of perovskite solar cells.

Heat treatment can transform some moiré superlattices into fully commensurate bilayers, where atoms in opposite layers align perfectly with each other. This structural transformation gives rise to markedly brighter interlayer excitons.

By inserting an epitaxial in-plane buffer layer of Bi₅FeTi₃O₁₅, an artificial flux closure architecture enables ferroelectric polarization from a single unit cell of BaTiO₃ or BiFeO₃.

Three protein interaction surfaces are computationally designed into one protein subunit to enable their accurate assembly into three-dimensional crystals with user-specified lattice architectures.