Research articles

Through direct visualization of how the moiré potential enhances and modulates the topological flat band in rhombohedral graphene superlattice, this work provides key insights into the microscopic mechanism of the fractional quantum anomalous Hall effect

By doping ice with NaCl, it is shown that a flexoelectric coefficient of up to 10 μC m⁻¹ is generated, enabling effective piezoelectric coefficients that are comparable to those of ceramics. This arises from the streaming current of quasi-liquid flow through grain boundaries from one side of the sample to the other.

The electrostatic interactions in aqueous ionic media are screened by mobile charge carriers, limiting device design and operation speed. Here the built-in electric field is leveraged to dope ions into vanadium dioxide, triggering a surface insulator-to-metal transition, further enabling high-speed in-memory sensing in aqueous solutions.

Atomic-resolution scanned Josephson tunnelling microscopy on multigap superconductor FeSe single crystals is studied, demonstrating condensate-resolved imaging and tuning capabilities.

Topological phenomena in ferroelectrics such as vortices are of interest as they may be useful for high-density storage applications, but similar phenomena have not been seen in antiferroelectrics, which possess antipolar dipole arrangements. Here, using electron microscopy, topological antivortices and faint vortices are seen in the prototypical antiferroelectric PbZrO₃.

The authors show that bulk brittle semiconductors can be plastically manufactured like metals by warm metalworking into free-standing, metre-scale films with decent physical properties.

A low-dose, single-exposure electron diffraction approach is used to reveal the dislocation character and operative slip systems in beam-sensitive molecular crystals.

Elasticity is ubiquitous in everyday life, but the molecular origin of the restoring force remains elusive. Here the authors use a series of density functional theory calculations to understand how interaction energies change as a result of the bending of molecular crystals.

Thermoelectric cooling can occur inside a whole material, but this is usually insignificant compared with Peltier cooling at material interfaces. An electronic phase transition in YbInCu₄ causes substantial Thomson cooling inside the whole material with a temperature drop of 6 K at 38 K.

The authors use scanning tunnelling microscopy and muon spin resonance to demonstrate time-reversal symmetry-breaking superconductivity in Cs(V, Ta)₃Sb₅. The Cooper pairing in this state exhibits magnetism and is modulated by it.

Ultrathin and flat crystals of bismuth are grown between the atomically flat layers of a van der Waals material. These crystals exhibit outstanding electronic properties, including gate-tunable quantum oscillations of the magnetoresistance.

Multiferroics can possess multiple ferroic orders, for example, electric polarization and magnetism, and are of interest for new device applications. Here thermal control is shown to manipulate electric and magnetic orders in a single-phase quasi-two-dimensional halide perovskite.

Employing a remote Coulomb superlattice formed by twisted bilayer WS₂, the authors demonstrate the engineering and on/off switching of a Coulomb superlattice of correlated states in bilayer graphene with period and strength determined by the remote superlattice.

Plastic deformation requires the propagation of a kinked profile along dislocations. It is shown that each kink acts as a set of travelling thermal spikes, favouring the nucleation of supplementary kinks and long dislocation jumps that are observed experimentally.

Oxidation normally deteriorates the mechanical properties of metals. But it is now shown that the formation of a percolating oxide network in metallic glass nanotubes can result in an unprecedented superelasticity of 14% at room temperature.

Proximity-induced chiral quantum emission is generated by applying nanoindentation on monolayer WSe₂ on an antiferromagnetic van der Waals material (NiPS₃) at zero external magnetic fields, reporting a degree of circular polarization of 0.89 and a single-photon purity of 95%.

The authors report subatomic precision in measuring the displacement of a nanowire. Such precision is achieved by employing deep-learning enabled analysis of single-shot scattering of topologically structured superoscillatory illumination.

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.

Understanding lithium dynamics in solid-state electrolytes used for Li-ion batteries can be challenging. Using nonlinear extreme-ultraviolet spectroscopies, a direct spectral signature of surface lithium ions showing a distinct blueshift relative to the bulk absorption spectra is observed in a prototypical solid-state electrolyte.

We report compact spin-valley-locked perovskite emitting metasurfaces where spin-dependent geometric phases are imparted into bound states in the continuum via Brillouin zone folding, simultaneously enabling chiral purity, directionality and large emission angles.