Nanoscale materials articles within Nature Physics

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  • Article |

    Nanoscale ferroelectricity is hard to characterize. Studies of BaTiO3 thin films now reveal a close coupling between the ferroelectric and the surface electrochemical states — a notion important for future applications of ferroelectric nanomaterials.

    • Sang Mo Yang
    • , Anna N. Morozovska
    •  & Sergei V. Kalinin

  • News & Views |

    Solid-state systems capable of simulating the theoretical predictions of condensed matter are in short supply. Demonstrations of electronic Lieb lattices using two different platforms suggest this may be about to change.

    • Dario Bercioux
    •  & Sander Otte

  • Letter |

    Individual vacancies in a chlorine monolayer on copper can be manipulated with scanning tunnelling microscopy to engineer artificial lattices that have topologically nontrivial electronic states.

    • Robert Drost
    • , Teemu Ojanen
    •  & Peter Liljeroth

  • Letter |

    An excited two-level system emits a single photon, but in special circumstances it can emit two. The reason for this unexpected two-photon emission lies with modified Rabi oscillations.

    • Kevin A. Fischer
    • , Lukas Hanschke
    •  & Kai Müller

  • News & Views |

    A connection between low crystalline symmetry and the allowed symmetries of the current-induced torques generated through the spin–orbit interaction opens up their use in devices with perpendicular magnetic anisotropy.

    • Hidekazu Kurebayashi

  • News & Views |

    By exploiting the optical Stark effect, the valley degree of freedom in monolayer transition metal dichalcogenides can be selectively manipulated and detected using all-optical methods.

    • Xiaoqin Li
    •  & Galan Moody

  • Letter |

    The emergence of optically silent phonons show that strong interlayer electron–phonon coupling can arise in van der Waals heterostructures, with the vibrational modes in one layer coupling to the electronic states in a neighbouring layer.

    • Chenhao Jin
    • , Jonghwan Kim
    •  & Feng Wang

  • Letter |

    Valleys in momentum space provide a degree of freedom that could be exploited for applications. A demonstration of valley pseudospin control now completes the generation–manipulation–detection paradigm, paving the way for valleytronic devices.

    • Ziliang Ye
    • , Dezheng Sun
    •  & Tony F. Heinz

  • Article |

    Experiments show that when driven by electric currents, magnetic skyrmions experience transverse motion due to their topological charge — similar to the conventional Hall effect experienced by charged particles in a perpendicular magnetic field.

    • Wanjun Jiang
    • , Xichao Zhang
    •  & Suzanne G. E. te Velthuis

  • Article |

    A near-field optical microscopy study provides nanoscale insight into an insulator-to-metal transition and the interplay with a neighbouring structural phase transition in a prototypical correlated electron material.

    • A. S. McLeod
    • , E. van Heumen
    •  & D. N. Basov

  • Letter |

    The elastic energy built up during peptide self-assembly is exploited in the realization of a microactuator. The energy stored is released on millisecond timescales via a buckling instability controlled with droplet microfluidics.

    • Aviad Levin
    • , Thomas C. T. Michaels
    •  & Tuomas P. J. Knowles

  • News & Views |

    In some two-dimensional materials, there's a puzzling intermediate metallic phase between superconducting and insulating states. Experiments on ultraclean crystalline samples suggest this metallic phase could be bosonic.

    • Philip W. Phillips

  • Letter |

    The magnetic response of nanoparticles made from wide-bandgap oxides that don’t contain any magnetic cations is somewhat of a mystery. Experiments with CeO2 suggest that the origin may be due to vacuum fluctuations.

    • Michael Coey
    • , Karl Ackland
    •  & Siddhartha Sen

  • Letter |

    Coherent valley exciton dynamics are directly probed in a monolayer transition metal dichalcogenide, providing access to the valley coherence time and decoherence mechanisms — crucial for developing methods for manipulating the valley pseudospin.

    • Kai Hao
    • , Galan Moody
    •  & Xiaoqin Li

  • News & Views |

    Single-layer transition metal dichalcogenides have already made their mark in the world of device physics. Twin studies have now found that they exhibit unconventional Ising pair superconductivity.

    • Efren Navarro-Moratalla
    •  & Pablo Jarillo-Herrero

  • Letter |

    The strong confinement of plasmons in graphene makes them interesting for practical applications, but also difficult to excite. An all-optical technique can excite plasmons in graphene over a range of frequencies.

    • T. J. Constant
    • , S. M. Hornett
    •  & E. Hendry

  • Letter |

    When laser light is focused onto graphene devices in a magnetic field a long-range photo-Nernst effect causes photocurrents to be generated along the free edges.

    • Helin Cao
    • , Grant Aivazian
    •  & Xiaodong Xu

  • Letter |

    The superconducting properties of NbSe2 as it approaches the monolayer limit are investigated by means of magnetotransport measurements, uncovering evidence of spin–momentum locking.

    • Xiaoxiang Xi
    • , Zefang Wang
    •  & Kin Fai Mak

  • News & Views |

    Negative refraction can produce optical Veselago lenses with a resolution that is not diffraction-limited. Similar lenses can also be made for electrons, with negative refraction of Dirac fermions now shown in graphene.

    • Péter Makk

  • Article |

    What happens to correlated electronic phases—superconductivity and charge density wave ordering—as a material is thinned? Experiments show that both can remain intact in just a single layer of niobium diselenide.

    • Miguel M. Ugeda
    • , Aaron J. Bradley
    •  & Michael F. Crommie

  • Letter |

    Bilayer graphene can host topological currents that are robust against defects and are associated with the electron valleys. It is now shown that electric fields can tune this topological valley transport over long distances at room temperature.

    • Mengqiao Sui
    • , Guorui Chen
    •  & Yuanbo Zhang

  • News & Views |

    When do structures comprising a few crystalline sheets become truly two dimensional? The number of layers certainly plays a role, but in trilayer graphene, the way they're stacked matters too — as shown in a series of Nature Physics papers from 2011.

    • Alberto F. Morpurgo

  • Letter |

    Contrary to common belief, bilayer graphene is not defect-free: the abundance of partial dislocations leads to a mosaic-like network structure. As a result, as now shown, the magnetoresistance of bilayer graphene depends linearly, rather than quadratically, on the external magnetic field.

    • Ferdinand Kisslinger
    • , Christian Ott
    •  & Heiko B. Weber

  • Letter |

    Strong many-body Coulomb interactions allow for bound two- and three-body excitonic states to form in monolayer transition metal dichalcogenides, but it is now shown that such interactions are strong enough to create four-body biexcitonic states.

    • Yumeng You
    • , Xiao-Xiao Zhang
    •  & Tony F. Heinz

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