Articles in 2026

A martensitic medium-entropy alloy surpasses the long-standing strength–ductility ceiling of conventional ultrahigh-strength steels. The strengthening without sacrificing ductility originates from Mo–B–C interface complexes that stabilize small-angle grain boundaries.

A charge transfer between metal oxide and halide perovskites occurring beneath the metal contact surface locally dopes the semiconductor, dramatically reducing contact resistance and enabling efficient low-voltage charge injection.

Through van der Waals integration of Ag/Au electrodes onto single-crystal CsPbBr₃ thin films and subsequent formation of Ag₂O/CsPbBr₃ bulk heterojunctions, effective interfacial hole doping is achieved, reducing the contact resistance by two orders of magnitude compared with previously reported contacts of similar composition.

Vocal fold cancer tumours lose some of their malignant traits when mechanically stimulated by physiological stretch or vibrations, mimicking the opening and closing of vocal folds and phonation.

Persistent synthesis challenges constrain the stabilization of single-atom lanthanide catalysts across many substrates. Using a method based on molten-nitrite chemistry, the atomic dispersion of lanthanide atoms on diverse substrates is achieved and exemplified by Dy₁/Pt for acidic hydrogen evolution.

A probe with month-long molecular afterglow luminescence targeting a downregulated cancer biomarker detects small liver tumours for image-guided resection in mice and rabbits.

Tactile sensing to differentiate normal and shear forces remains a challenge. A force microsensor array based on graphene and a liquid-metal composites decouples normal–shear force sensing, achieving a 200 μm scale and a 0.9 μN force detection limit.

Tellurium vacancies can drive atomic reconstruction in PdTe₂ thin films, converting them into non-layered PdTe. Such a non-stoichiometric phase transition yields large-scale thin-film superconductors and can also create an intermediate heterostructure that enables helicity-sensitive terahertz emission.

A distinct class of ordered states without symmetry breaking is reported with perfect non-crystalline steric order. These ideal non-crystals exhibit non-trivial long-range orientational correlations and crystal-like properties.

The open interfaces of a three-dimensional all-dielectric photonic topological insulator operate as effective metasurfaces with helical surface states, enabling spin-dependent steering and directional control of far-field surface state emission.

Using a regioirregular polymerization strategy, diverse polymer structures containing urethane, carbonate and urea linkages are synthesized from a single tetramethylene urethane monomer. Mixed polymers can be depolymerized to the starting monomer in a closed-loop manner.

A molecular-level understanding of structural evolution upon electrochemical doping in organic mixed ionic-electronic conductors is required. A pronounced reduction in mass and thickness is observed in an n-type ladder polymer upon doping with protic cations owing to water expulsion.

Growing transition metal dichalcogenide monolayers at a buried van der Waals interface simultaneously improves thickness control, preserves ultraclean interfaces, and enables intrinsic patterning and atomically selective Janus structure formation.

Nano-confinement between a capping layer composed of graphene or hexagonal boron nitride and a substrate directs the growth kinetics during chemical vapour deposition, which enables the atomically precise synthesis of 2D transition metal dichalcogenide monolayers, Janus monolayers and van der Waals heterostructures with ultraclean interfaces.

A single-step thermal process reliably generates high-density, narrowband quantum emitters in hexagonal boron nitride. More than 25% of these emitters show room-temperature optical spin readout, revealing S = 1 and S = 1/2 spin complexes that are explained by charge transfer from strongly to weakly coupled spin pairs.

As artificial intelligence tools continue to develop, their impact is growing.

A martensitic alloy with a tensile strength exceeding 3 GPa and a fracture elongation of 5.13% is developed. These mechanical properties arise from interface complexes interacting with dense dislocation networks, which is a mechanism shown to be applicable to other compositions.

Resistance noise in memristive devices is often described as a thermally activated process across simple energy barriers, but this can underestimate the role of entropy in a complex free energy landscape. Quantifying transition rates between discrete resistance states during resistance fluctuations in nanoscale GeTe shows that entropic contributions can strongly shape the free energy barriers.

A microwave-assisted process is developed for the rapid and scalable manufacture of pure-phase metallic MoS₂ nanosheets, enabling practical electrochemical devices for energy applications.