Materials science articles within Nature

Featured

  • Article |

    A conductive, low-melting-point and healable sulfur iodide material aids the practical realization of solid-state Li–S batteries, which have high theoretical energy densities and show potential in next-generation battery chemistry.

    • Jianbin Zhou
    • , Manas Likhit Holekevi Chandrappa
    •  & Ping Liu

  • News & Views |

    Diamond layers can help to dissipate the heat generated by high-power semiconductor devices. This effect has now been enhanced by adding layers of materials and engineering their crystal-lattice vibrations to be compatible at the interfaces.

    • Liwen Sang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A synergistic dopant-additive combination strategy using methylammonium chloride as the dopant and a Lewis-basic ionic-liquid additive is shown to enable the fabrication of perovskite solar modules achieving record certified performance and long-term operational stability.

    • Bin Ding
    • , Yong Ding
    •  & Mohammad Khaja Nazeeruddin

  • News & Views |

    The molecules of liquid crystals and proteins can form liquid-like condensates, but such a phenomenon had not been observed for supramolecular polymers, which are held together by non-covalent bonds — until now.

    • Jennifer L. Ross

  • News & Views |

    Small solvent molecules have been found to enable a previously unknown ion-transport mechanism in battery electrolytes, speeding up charging and increasing performance at low temperatures.

    • Chong Yan
    •  & Jia-Qi Huang

  • Article |

    We successfully rebuild an approximate void-free additive manufacturing microstructure in Ti-6Al-4V titanium alloy by the development of a void-free additive manufacturing processing technique through an understanding of the asynchronism of phase transformation and grain growth.

    • Zhan Qu
    • , Zhenjun Zhang
    •  & Zhefeng Zhang

  • Article |

    An electrolyte design using small-sized fluoroacetonitrile solvents to form a ligand channel produces lithium-ion batteries simultaneously achieving high energy density, fast charging and wide operating temperature range, desirable features for batteries working in extreme conditions.

    • Di Lu
    • , Ruhong Li
    •  & Xiulin Fan

  • Research Briefing |

    An innovative high-strength ceramic consists of interlocked, nanometre-scale plates in which stacked layers of the material are twisted relative to each other. It can deform at room temperature without fracturing instantly — thereby achieving a long-standing goal for materials scientists.

  • Research Briefing |

    The fractional quantum anomalous Hall effect occurs when the Hall resistance in a material is quantized to fractional multiples of the fundamental unit h/e2 at zero magnetic field. Observing the effect in a system consisting of a combination of five-layer graphene and hexagonal boron nitride enriches the family of topological matter phases, and opens up new opportunities in quantum computation.

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A bulk ceramic composed of interlocked boron nitride nanoplates with a laminated structure of twist-stacked nanoslices is created using hot-pressing and spark plasma sintering, which exhibits large elastic and plastic deformability and high strength at room temperature.

    • Yingju Wu
    • , Yang Zhang
    •  & Yongjun Tian

  • Article |

    Integer and fractional quantum anomalous Hall effects in a rhombohedral pentalayer graphene–hBN moiré superlattice are observed, providing an ideal platform for exploring charge fractionalization and (non-Abelian) anyonic braiding at zero magnetic field.

    • Zhengguang Lu
    • , Tonghang Han
    •  & Long Ju

  • Article
    | Open Access

    An experimental design consisting of a photonic-crystal nanoslab covered with upconversion nanoparticles demonstrates the phenomenon of supercritical coupling, resulting in giant enhancement of upconversion by photonic bound states in the continuum.

    • Chiara Schiattarella
    • , Silvia Romano
    •  & Gianluigi Zito

  • Research Briefing |

    Tailoring symmetries in an innovative class of optoelectronic metasurface produces a rich landscape of tunable current patterns down to the nanoscale. These materials provide opportunities for ultrafast light-controlled charge flows that could have applications in terahertz science, information processing and other realms.

  • News & Views |

    Magnetic materials with zero net magnetization fall into two classes: conventional antiferromagnets and altermagnets. Physicists have identified a property in altermagnets that widens the divide between the two groups.

    • Carmine Autieri

  • News & Views |

    By combining materials-synthesis techniques, researchers have come up with a way of building layered structures that display intriguing wave-like patterns of electric polarization, and could be useful for next-generation electronics.

    • Berit H. Goodge

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The stacking of freestanding ferroelectric perovskite layers with controlled twist angles results in a peculiar pattern of polarization vortices and antivortices that emerges from the flexoelectric coupling of polarization to strain gradients.

    • G. Sánchez-Santolino
    • , V. Rouco
    •  & J. Santamaria

  • Article |

    Examining the in-plane spin components of the noncoplanar antiferromagnet manganese ditelluride provides spectroscopic and computational evidence of materials with a new type of plaid-like spin splitting in the antiferromagnetic ground state.

    • Yu-Peng Zhu
    • , Xiaobing Chen
    •  & Chang Liu

  • News & Views |

    In lithium-metal batteries, grains of lithium can become electrically isolated from the anode, lowering battery performance. Experiments reveal that rest periods after battery discharge might help to solve this problem.

    • Laura C. Merrill

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Vectorial optoelectronic metasurfaces are described, showing that light pulses can be used to drive and direct local charge flows around symmetry-broken plasmonic nanostructures, leading to tunable responses in terahertz emission.

    • Jacob Pettine
    • , Prashant Padmanabhan
    •  & Hou-Tong Chen

  • Article |

    Calendar ageing of lithium metal batteries in the discharged state improves capacity retention through isolated lithium recovery, which is in contrast with the capacity degradation observed during charged state calendar ageing.

    • Wenbo Zhang
    • , Philaphon Sayavong
    •  & Yi Cui

  • Research Briefing |

    Crystalline silicon solar cells have been brittle, heavy and fragile until now. Highly flexible versions with high power-to-weight ratios and power conversion efficiencies of 26.06–26.81% were produced by improving manufacturing and design technologies and by using thin wafer substrates.

  • News & Views |

    A technique for embedding fibres with semiconductor devices produces defect-free strands that are hundreds of metres long. Garments woven with these threads offer a tantalizing glimpse of the wearable electronics of the future.

    • Xiaoting Jia
    •  & Alex Parrott

  • Article |

    We develop a proton-exchange membrane system that reduces CO2 to formic acid at a catalyst that is derived from waste lead–acid batteries and in which a lattice carbon activation mechanism contributes.

    • Wensheng Fang
    • , Wei Guo
    •  & Bao Yu Xia

  • Article |

    A study reports a combination of processing, optimization and low-damage deposition methods for the production of silicon heterojunction solar cells exhibiting flexibility and high performance.

    • Yang Li
    • , Xiaoning Ru
    •  & Zongping Shao

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A mechanical design is developed for the fabrication of ultralong, fracture-free and perturbation-free semiconductor fibres to address the increasing demand for flexible and wearable optoelectronics.

    • Zhixun Wang
    • , Zhe Wang
    •  & Lei Wei

  • News & Views |

    Millions of tonnes of ‘red mud’, a hazardous waste of aluminium production, are generated annually. A potentially sustainable process for treating this mud shows that it could become a source of iron for making steel.

    • Chenna Rao Borra

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Red mud is shown to yield green steel through fossil-free hydrogen-plasma-based reduction, a simple and fast method involving rapid liquid-state reduction, chemical partitioning, and density-driven and viscosity-driven separation.

    • Matic Jovičević-Klug
    • , Isnaldi R. Souza Filho
    •  & Dierk Raabe

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Single-cycle terahertz pumps are used to impulsively trigger ionic hopping in battery solid electrolytes, probing ion transport at its fastest limit and demonstrating the connection between activated transport and the thermodynamics of information.

    • Andrey D. Poletayev
    • , Matthias C. Hoffmann
    •  & Aaron M. Lindenberg

  • Research Briefing |

    In heavy-fermion compounds, hybridization between mobile charge carriers and localized magnetic moments gives rise to exotic quantum phenomena. The discovery of heavy fermions in a van der Waals metal that can be peeled apart to a layer a few atoms thick allows these phenomena to be studied and manipulated in two dimensions.

  • Article |

    Using valley-resolved scanning tunnelling spectroscopy, twisted WSe2 bilayers are studied, including incommensurate dodecagon quasicrystals at 30° and commensurate moiré crystals at 21.8° and 38.2°.

    • Yanxing Li
    • , Fan Zhang
    •  & Chih-Kang Shih

  • News & Views |

    Materials that adhere tightly to human tissues can promote healing and boost the sensitivity of biomedical diagnostic devices. An ‘evolving’ gel has been made that synergizes two strategies for forming interfaces with tissue.

    • Sophia J. Bailey
    •  & Eric A. Appel

  • News & Views |

    Ultrathin materials have long been touted as a solution to the problems faced by the ever-growing semiconductor industry. Evidence that 3D chips can be built from 2D semiconductors suggests that the hype was justified.

    • Tania Roy

  • Research Briefing |

    Supersolids are long-sought-after quantum materials with two seemingly contradictory features: a rigid solid structure and superfluidity. A triangular-lattice cobaltate material provides evidence for a quantum spin analogue of supersolidity, with an additional giant magnetocaloric effect — discoveries that pave the way for helium-free cooling to temperatures below 1 kelvin with frustrated quantum magnets.

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