Nanoscale devices articles within Nature Materials

Featured

  • Perspective |

    Molecular materials for computing progress intensively but the performance and reliability still lag behind. Here the authors assess the current state of computing with molecular-based materials and describe two issues as the basis of a new computing technology: continued exploration of molecular electronic properties and process development for on-chip integration.

    • R. Stanley Williams
    • , Sreebrata Goswami
    •  & Sreetosh Goswami

  • Feature |

    Peng Wu, Tianyi Zhang, Jiadi Zhu, Tomás Palacios and Jing Kong discuss the reproducibility issues in the synthesis and device fabrication of two-dimensional transition metal dichalcogenides that need to be addressed to enable the lab-to-fab transition.

    • Peng Wu
    • , Tianyi Zhang
    •  & Jing Kong

  • Research Briefing |

    Inspired by the observed coherent interface between hexagonal α-Fe2O3 and tetragonal fluorine-doped SnO2, an oxygen sublattice-matching paradigm is proposed to grow textured films on lattice-mismatched substrates. Through assessing the similarity of Voronoi cells for sublattices, this approach offers opportunities to synthesize (semi)coherent heterostructures and textured films.

  • Article |

    Depositing textured functional materials on transparent conducting oxides remains a challenge. We demonstrate the formation of a coherent interface between a set of functional oxides and fluorine-doped-tin-oxide-based transparent conducting oxide substrate despite the lattice mismatch, owing to dimensional and chemical matching of oxygen sublattices at the interface.

    • Huiting Huang
    • , Jun Wang
    •  & Zhigang Zou

  • News & Views |

    The monolithic 3D integration of wafer-free all-2D-materials-based electronics can produce an AI processor.

    • Fang Wang
    •  & Weida Hu

  • Article |

    Gold nanoclusters show promise as photothermal materials, but are often thermally unstable. Here ligand engineering is used to integrate molecular rotors with gold nanoclusters to dissipate thermal energy and improve photothermal therapy performance.

    • Jing Chen
    • , Peilin Gu
    •  & Chunhai Fan

  • News & Views |

    Quantum dots couple to form artificial molecules that allow for variable colour emission in response to an electric field.

    • James Cassidy
    • , Justin Ondry
    •  & Dmitri V. Talapin

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Unit-cell-thick films of metal–organic frameworks with ordered porosity would be attractive for membrane applications as these thin systems combine large molecular flux with high selectivity. Here crystalline ZIF films are grown on a crystalline substrate with high H2/N2 gas separation performance.

    • Qi Liu
    • , Yurun Miao
    •  & Kumar Varoon Agrawal

  • News & Views |

    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.

    • Yang Liu
    •  & James C. Hone

  • Research Briefing |

    The transmission spectrum of single-molecule junctions provides fingerprint information on the charge-transport properties. A technique called single-molecule photoelectron tunnelling spectroscopy has been developed that enables mapping of the transmission spectrum beyond the highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO)–lowest unoccupied molecular orbital (LUMO) gap at room temperature and can be used to explore the energy-dependent charge transport through single-molecule junctions.

  • News & Views |

    Above-bandgap, nanosecond laser pulses enable the localized in situ writing of spin defects in prefabricated nanophotonic cavities. The approach preserves defect and cavity mode properties, key requirements towards cavity–emitter coupling in quantum networks.

    • Sridhar Majety
    •  & Marina Radulaski

  • Letter |

    Using direct laser writing with a nanosecond pulsed laser operating at above-bandgap photon energies, we demonstrate the selective formation of spin defects in photonic crystal cavities in 4H-silicon carbide and their in situ characterization.

    • Aaron M. Day
    • , Jonathan R. Dietz
    •  & Evelyn L. Hu

  • Article |

    The authors fabricate a fluxonium circuit using a granular aluminium nanoconstriction to replace the conventional superconductor–insulator–superconductor tunnel junction. Their characterization suggests that this approach will be a useful element in the superconducting qubit toolkit.

    • D. Rieger
    • , S. Günzler
    •  & I. M. Pop

  • News & Views |

    Coupling charge transfer with molecular protonation processes yields electronic systems that display negative differential conductance, an effect that can be harnessed to implement a wide range of device configurations from logic gates to synaptic behaviour.

    • Joshua Hihath

  • Article |

    To realize electronic operations beyond the von Neumann bottleneck, a new type of switch that can mimic self-learning is needed. Here, the authors demonstrate all-in-one-place logic and memory operations based on dynamic molecular switch that can emulate brain-like synaptic and Pavlovian response, bringing the field a step closer to molecular-scale hardware.

    • Yulong Wang
    • , Qian Zhang
    •  & Christian A. Nijhuis

  • News & Views |

    Individual fullerenes containing switchable electric dipoles have been demonstrated to function as single-molecule memory and logic at room temperature.

    • Douglas Natelson

  • Article |

    Single-molecule electronics provide the potential solution for high-density integration and low-power consumption in massive data-driven applications, but have yet to be explored. Here, the authors report low-power logic-in-memory operations, based on single electric dipole flipping in the two-terminal single-metallofullerene device at room temperature.

    • Jing Li
    • , Songjun Hou
    •  & Wenjing Hong

  • Article |

    Colour centre emission from hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) holds promise for quantum technologies but activation and tuning are challenging. Here, the authors show twist-angle emission brightness tuning and external voltage brightness modulation at the twisted interface of hBN flakes.

    • Cong Su
    • , Fang Zhang
    •  & Alex Zettl

  • News & Views |

    Sub-100-mV switching at the nanosecond timescale is achieved in ferroelectric devices by approaching bulk-like perfection in prototypical BaTiO3 thin films.

    • Morgan Trassin
    •  & Vincent Garcia

  • News & Views |

    The exceptional quality of hexagonal boron nitride crystals that can be cleaved into few layers provides ultrathin dielectrics, thereby opening a route to ultrasmall capacitors with large capacitances. With such capacitors, the superconducting transmon qubit is scaled down by orders of magnitude.

    • Christian Schönenberger

  • Article |

    Colour centres are a promising quantum information platform, but coherence degradation after integration in nanostructures has hindered scalability. Here, the authors show that waveguide-integrated VSi centres in SiC maintain spin-optical coherences, enabling nuclear high-fidelity spin qubit operations.

    • Charles Babin
    • , Rainer Stöhr
    •  & Jörg Wrachtrup

  • News & Views |

    A seemingly disordered network of nanowires governed by thermodynamics is used as the physical ‘reservoir’ in a memristive implementation of reservoir computing to process spatiotemporal information.

    • Qiangfei Xia
    • , J. Joshua Yang
    •  & Rivu Midya

  • News & Views |

    A singlet-triplet hole spin qubit in a Ge quantum well is demonstrated to be fast, coherent, and compatible with operation at magnetic fields below 10 mT, opening the door to integration with superconducting technologies.

    • Floris Braakman
    •  & Pasquale Scarlino

  • Article |

    Silicon is a light element with high lattice inversion symmetry, and so is not expected to possess a substantial spin–orbit interaction (SOI), which is desirable for spintronics. Here, a silicon-based heterostructure is demonstrated to have a gate-tuneable Rashba-type SOI.

    • Soobeom Lee
    • , Hayato Koike
    •  & Masashi Shiraishi

  • Article |

    A general method for the synthesis of high-purity crystals of metastable 1T′-phase transition metal dichalcogenides is reported, providing a source of phase-engineered materials that can be used to systematically explore their intrinsic properties.

    • Zhuangchai Lai
    • , Qiyuan He
    •  & Hua Zhang

  • News & Views |

    Deposition of a one-atom-thick layer of Ag or Cu on Au electrodes proves to be an effective strategy to tune the band alignment and conductivity of molecular junctions.

    • Thomas Frederiksen

  • Article |

    Scanning electron microscopy is used to image stacking domains in few-layer graphene, as well as moiré patterns in twisted van der Waals heterostructures, allowing for the correlation of the local structure with their excitonic properties.

    • Trond I. Andersen
    • , Giovanni Scuri
    •  & Mikhail D. Lukin

  • News & Views |

    Carbon nanotubes with single-digit diameter embedded in a solid artificial membrane show pressure-sensitive ionic conductance that is similar to the mechanically activated currents of biological ion channels.

    • Sanjin Marion
    •  & Aleksandra Radenovic

  • Article |

    Spin qubits in systems with strong spin–orbit coupling can be electrically controlled, but are usually affected by short coherence times. Here, coherence times up to 10 ms are obtained for strain-engineered hole states bound to boron acceptors in silicon 28.

    • Takashi Kobayashi
    • , Joseph Salfi
    •  & Sven Rogge

  • News & Views |

    Creation of bioinspired ion channels that separate ions without compromising selectivity, conductivity or rectification ability has long been a challenge. Integration of metal–organic frameworks into asymmetric nanopore membranes overcomes this limitation.

    • Alexandre Legrand
    •  & Shuhei Furukawa

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