Volume 25 Issue 2, February 2026

A polar antiferromagnetic metal is realized in Sr₃Co₂O₇ through geometry-driven inversion-symmetry breaking, and an anomalous Hall effect is observed.

Adding an ammonium propionic acid stabilizes the phases of both the middle and top perovskite layers, which further enables efficient and stable perovskite/perovskite/silicon tandem solar cells.

A thin coherent interlayer on polycrystalline perovskites prompts the formation of uniform, orderly fullerene films with high coverage while suppressing dimerization enabling efficient and stable perovskite photovoltaics.

An organic crystal repairs itself, even in liquid nitrogen, by using a dipole-driven mechanism rather than relying on thermal diffusion.

Five different crystallization pathways of high-density ice at room temperature reveal a metastable ice phase with a body-centred tetragonal structure, termed ice XXI.

Computational approaches to materials design promise to accelerate the discovery of materials with superior functionalities. This Review presents key computational advances in materials design over the past few decades, highlighting the paradigm shift from conventional screening approaches to inverse generation driven by deep generative models. Current challenges and future perspectives of materials inverse design are also discussed.

A domain-folding strategy is developed to assemble graphene into carbon fibres at room temperature, achieving ultrahigh strength and stiffness as well as greatly reducing energy consumption.

Wafer-scale monolayer MoO₃ enables the integration of dielectrics with ultralow capacitance equivalent thickness on atomically thin semiconductors, achieving high yield and effective operation of n-type and p-type top-gated transistors.

The authors report a large-scale spin-locking effect of light within a Brownian medium arising from the intrinsic spin–orbit interactions of scattering from multiple individual nanoparticles in a complex disordered system.

Polariton interferometry reveals flat-band ultrastrong coupling between phonons and surface plasmon polaritons over a large wavevector range.

This work presents SCIGEN, a machine learning framework integrating geometric constraints into material generation. The framework enables the discovery of stable quantum material candidates, and the authors synthesize two predicted magnetic materials.

Cobalt ions in different sublayers of the double-layered Ruddlesden–Popper perovskite Sr₃Co₂O₇ are found to develop inequivalent ionic displacements, geometrically generating a polar state while preserving metallic conductivity and exhibiting antiferromagnetism.

Green hydrogen production often needs Pt-based electrolysers; however, their high cost and lack of scalability hinder uptake. Here a core–shell Ru-based electrolyser is demonstrated for acidic hydrogen evolution and demonstrates a low overpotential and Pt-like stability, as well as scalability to a 200 cm² device.

Garnet-type LLZO electrolytes are considered among the most promising solid-state electrolytes for all-solid-state batteries; however, numerous challenges need to be addressed before they are integrated into a cell. By precipitating amorphous zirconium oxide onto grain boundaries, increased ionic conductivity is observed and dendrite growth is suppressed.

To address the phase instability issue of perovskites, ammonium propionic acid is introduced to enhance the phase stability of both perovskite layers in perovskite/perovskite/silicon triple-junction solar cells, resulting in improved efficiency and reproducibility.

The authors develop a molecular dopant to avoid the dimerization of the electron-selective material phenyl-C₆₁-butyric acid methyl ester, resulting in enhanced stability and efficiency in inverted perovskite solar cells.

The fabrication of conventional artificial chemoreceptors are difficult to scale up. Here a wafer scale cell-on-memristor chemoreceptive array is reported, allowing for self-powered biosensing and in situ spike encoding.

Cryogenic conditions limit molecular diffusion, inhibiting self-healing in most molecular systems. Here the authors present an organic molecular crystal capable of autonomous recovery at 77 K due to strong dipole–dipole interactions between aligned molecular layers.

Combining liquid crystals and nanocrystals functionalized with promesogenic ligands yields an interstitial colloidal solid solution exhibiting high thermal expansivity and reversible superlattice phase transitions driven by mesogen diffusion.

Multiple freezing–melting pathways of ice VI are found at room temperature, occurring via the ice XXI and ice VII phases. Supercompressed water structurally evolves from high-density water to very-high-density water.

A focused-ultrasound-mediated mechanogenetics approach enables the genetic modification of cancer cells near solid tumours to activate chimeric antigen receptor T cell response and achieve tumour suppression at distinct sites.

Polymer-coated liposomes specifically target and deliver interleukin-12 to metastatic ovarian cancer, strongly sensitizing the tumours to combination therapy with immune checkpoint inhibitors.