Search

High-temperature copper oxide superconductors are usually doped with holes or electrons, not both. The discovery of a material that can be doped with both electrons and holes finally clarifies the region of low doping and the effect of the added dopants.

Classically ordered phases normally coupled directly to external probes but exotic multipolar phases are not straightforwardly accessible. Here the authors show that TmMgGaO₄ has multipolar order that can be inferred by inelastic neutron scattering and modeled by transverse field Ising model.

The deconfined quantum critical point describing a continuous phase transition from a plaquette-singlet to an antiferromagnetic Néel phase in SrCu₂(BO₃)₂ has remained elusive. Here, the authors conduct high-pressure heat capacity measurements on the material providing experimental evidence indicating a first-order quantum phase transition between the two different symmetry-breaking phases.

Non-zero topological charge prevents the straight motion of ferromagnetic skyrmions and hinders their applications. Here, the authors report the stabilization and current-driven dynamics of skyrmions in GdFeCo films in which the ferrimagnetic skyrmions can move with high velocity and reduced skyrmion Hall angle.

CeSb undergoes a devil’s staircase sequence of extremely long-period modulations of the magnetically ordered 4f states. Here, the authors visualize how the devil’s staircase ordering impacts mobile electrons and collapses the well-defined band picture at the Fermi energy.

The magneto-optical Kerr effect is demonstrated in an antiferromagnetic metal. Large rotation angles, magnetic octupole domain imaging was enabled.

The change in the electrical properties of a ferromagnetic under the influence of a magnetic field depends strongly on field orientation. Marti et al.now show that this so-called anisotropic magnetoresistance is also evident in antiferromagnetic semiconductors, making them useful in spintronics.

Understanding of the Earth’s interior requires insight into the thermal properties of silicate melts under high pressure. Here, the authors present high-pressure spectroscopic measurements of iron-enriched dense silicate glasses and infer the radiative conductivity of dense melts at the core–mantle boundary.

A multipole polaron, composed of a mobile electron dressed with a cloud of the quadrupole crystal-electric-field polarization, is identified in a rare-earth intermetallic.

The compound α-NaMnO₂is very interesting due to the complexity of its phases, which are governed by different degrees of freedom. Here, the authors show that this compound possesses ground-state inhomogeneities due to geometrical frustration and simultaneously active spin and lattice degrees of freedom.

The anomalous Hall effect has been observed in high-quality epitaxial thin films of non-collinear antiferromagnet Mn₃Pt, and can be switched on and off using an electric field.

Magnetic skyrmions can be stabilized at room temperature in cobalt layers sandwiched between heavy metal layers due to engineering of the interfacial Dzyaloshinskii–Moriya interaction.

The authors report coexisting ferromagnetism, polar distortion and metallicity in quasi-two-dimensional Ca₃Co₃O₈, providing a platform to exploit magnetoelectric coupling in a metallic system.

Chiral polar-skyrmion bubbles are observed in superlattices of titanium-based perovskite oxides at room temperature.

Electron magnetic circular dichroism gives element-selective information on spin and orbital magnetic moments, but its low intensity has limited its use for nanoscale studies. Using a statistical analysis method, Muto et al.show that this can be overcome with nanometre-sized electron beams.

The authors report very high in-field critical current densities in Fe-based superconductors. They achieve this through doping to increase the carrier density and adding defects to pin vortices.

Copper oxide superconductors do not superconduct unless electrons or holes are added to the parent compounds. A theoretical study reveals how the electrons or holes affect the host material microscopically in an asymmetric way.

In non-conventional superconductors, it is usually found that superconductivity emerges in the vicinity of a critical point where antiferromagnetic order gradually disappears—corresponding to a second-order transition. Investigation of the newly discovered iron pnictide superconductors challenges this picture, showing an abrupt, first-order transition.

Ferroelectricity and ferromagnetism are combined in a bulk perovskite oxide at room temperature by constructing a percolating network of interacting magnetic ions within a complex polar solid.

A new type of Hall effect—the layer Hall effect—is produced in a 2D antiferromagnet that does not exhibit any net magnetization.

The complex electronic motion in the quantum Hall regime in semiconductors has so far eluded analysis of its microscopic structure. Here, the authors use scanning gate microscopy to measure the spatial structure of transport inside a metal in this regime, opening the way for localized manipulation of the electronic states.

Here, the authors show robust edge state transport in patterned nanoribbon networks produced on epigraphene—graphene that is epitaxially grown on non-polar faces of SiC wafers. The edge state forms a zero-energy, one-dimensional ballistic network with dissipationless nodes at ribbon–ribbon junctions.

Ultracold quantum gases in optical lattices have been used to study a wide range of many-body effects. Nearly all experiments so far, however, have been performed in cubic optical lattice structures. Now a ‘honeycomb’ lattice structure has been realized. The approach promises insight into materials with hexagonal crystal symmetries, such as graphene or carbon nanotubes.

The pore space in the metal–organic framework Zr₆O₄(OH)₄(bpydc)₆ can be used as a scaffold to grow precisely defined atomically thick sheets of metal halide materials, taking advantage of multiple binding sites to direct complexation of the metal ions; these metal halide nanosheets fill the size gap between discrete molecular magnets and bulk magnetic materials, with potentially unusual magnetic properties arising from this size regime.

Spin-orbit torque (SOT) induced magnetization switching facilitates all electric multi-state spin memories and spin logic devices. Here the authors show a new SOT field-free switching mode where the perpendicular layer with tilted easy axis is coupled to an in-plane layer with a uniaxial easy axis.

Interfaces between insulating oxides have revealed exotic electronic and magnetic properties. It is now shown that a complex magnetic structure can emerge in an oxide superlattice, and that specific interfaces can unexpectedly exhibit exchange bias. The observations reveal the induction of antiferromagnetism in a material that is usually paramagnetic.

While two-dimensional semiconductors enable the investigation of light–matter interactions in low dimensions, a link to magnetic order has so far remained elusive. Now, the antiferromagnetic insulator NiPS₃ is found to exhibit excitons with strong linear polarization that are coupled to the zigzag antiferromagnetic order.

Suppression of quantum tunneling in molecular magnets is key for their magnetic behaviours to be exploitable. Here, the authors show that tuning the geometry of lanthanide single-ion magnets leads to a suppression of the quantum tunneling, finding a three-fold reduction of the tunnel splitting upon changing the crystal field symmetry.

Developing room-temperature magnets from materials containing onlysporbitals has remained an elusive but important goal. Here, Zbořil and co-workers report hydroxofluorographenes that exhibit room-temperature antiferromagnetic ordering and low-temperature ferromagnetic behaviour with high magnetic moments.

Light pulses can control magnetism in a material, and the effective creation of magnetic oscillations leads to spintronic devices with higher efficiency. Here, the authors increase the efficiency of magnon excitation by using a material in which orbital angular momenta are not quenched.

The authors report a crossover from easy-plane to easy-axis magnetic anisotropy in monolayer RuCl₃, which they attribute to an in-plane distortion of the Cl atoms observed in electron diffraction that modify the non-Kitaev exchange terms. The results are useful for overcoming the challenge of realizing a quantum spin liquid.

Chiral damping plays a critical role in the motion of skyrmions and domain walls, but it difficult to distinguish its influence from Dzyaloshinskii Moriya Interaction (DMI). Here, Safeer et al show that competition between chiral damping and the DMI result in a sign change in the chiral asymmetry.

The realization of the fractional quantum Hall effect with ultracold atoms in optical lattices is much sought after. Here, the authors propose a new way of obtaining fractional quantum Hall states in lattice systems by transforming a nonlocal abstract model into an implementable scheme.

Skyrmions are a topological magnetic texture that have garnered considerable interest for various technological applications. Here, Sekiguchi et al. investigate the ultrafast optical response of GaV4S6, and find a significant reduction in the thermal conductivity in the skyrmion phase.

By pushing both time and frequency resolution in optical spectroscopy it is now possible to resolve antiferromagnetic fluctuations in a copper oxide superconductor, which are believed to mediate the pairing of charge carriers.

Metallic surface states on CoO₂ and Pd terminated surfaces due to electronic reconstruction have been observed in the CoO₂-based delafossites. In contrast, here the authors report an interesting insulating state on the CrO₂ terminated surface of PdCrO₂ due to charge-disproportionation.

The kagome metal ErMn6Sn6 is known to display interesting physics. Here, the simultaneous effect of a magnetic field and pressure is investigated, revealing the role of the spiral behavior of magnetic layers on magnetic transition temperatures

Here, the authors report evidence of unconventional correlated insulating states in bilayer graphene/CrOCl heterostructures over wide doping ranges and demonstrate their application for the realization of low-temperature logic inverters.

Although magnetic domain walls could one day be used for information storage, the current challenges to their use are the irreproducibility of their displacement and the limits to their maximum speed. It is now shown that the Rashba effect can be used to provide a solution to both these issues.

Superconducting currents around a loop containing a weak link can be quantized and only change during discrete events called phase slips. Now, the heat generated by a single phase slip and the subsequent relaxation have been experimentally observed.

The origin of the superconductivity in iron-based superconductors remains elusive and whether a mechanism which describes all members can be found is under constant study. Using Raman spectroscopy the authors investigate magnetic ordering in FeSe, and further demonstrate that its properties are distinct among the iron-based superconductors.

Magnetic tunnel junctions consist of two magnetic layers, separated by a thin insulator. The simplicity belies the industrial importance: magnetic tunnel junctions have a very wide variety of applications in contemporary society. Here, Fu et al present a magnetic tunnel junction composed of single van der Waals magnetic insulator, CrI3, exhibiting remarkably low power consumption.