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Using oxide interface engineering, researchers have shown that a single layer of copper and oxygen atoms can support superconductivity in a bilayer structure made from a metal and an insulator.

The metallic sheet at the heterointerface between two different insulating and non-magnetic oxides displays seemingly conflicting ferromagnetic properties that may be explained by the presence of a spiral magnetic structure.

Ferroelectricity and superconductivity do not have much in common. Now, a superconducting and a ferroelectric-like state have been found to coexist in a doped perovskite oxide.

When the thickness of a LaNiO₃ film is reduced to only two unit cells, the material undergoes an abrupt metal-to-insulator transition.

The use of terahertz pulses to 'gate' interlayer charge transport in a superconductor could lead to a variety of new and interesting applications.

Domain walls are natural borders in ferromagnetic, ferroelectric or ferroelastic materials. It seems that they can also be reactive areas that produce crystallographic phases never before observed in bulk materials. See Letter p.379

As capacitors, the ubiquitous components of electronic circuitry, get smaller, keeping them insulating is a challenge. But that's not necessarily bad news — some conductivity might be just the thing for data storage.

Epitaxial growth followed by topotactic reduction yields superconducting nickelate phases with the same hole-doping level as that obtained by chemical substitution, without causing structural disorder.

Measurements of four different infinite-layer nickelates show that magnetic behaviour coexists with superconductivity. This is different from what is seen in cuprates, giving a strong distinction between the two classes of oxide superconductors.

The interaction between ferroelectric distortion and two rotational modes in some transition-metal oxides promises a strategy for strong magnetoelectronic coupling, possibly at room temperature.

Artificial superlattices made from a ferroelectric and a paraelectric oxide are studied, and a new kind of atom rearrangement is found to take place at the interfaces between thin films of these materials, leading to an unusual, 'improper' ferroelectric effect. As a result, the system has a very large dielectric constant that, in contrast to conventional ferroelectricity, is fairly temperature independent; this observation is of considerable interest for practical applications.

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.

Phonon polaritons are promising for infrared applications while it is difficult to tune the phonon polariton properties. Here, authors report a thermal and electrostatic tuning of surface phonon polaritons in heterostructures of LaAlO3/SrTiO3.

Observations of the conversion of orbital angular momentum into charge indicate that the orbital degree of freedom can provide a channel for information storage and processing.

Electrons sitting in quantum wells at the interface between two oxides can localize in the disordered potential, completely changing their properties. Here, the authors observe unexpectedly large thermopower that oscillates upon carrier density modulation and ascribe it to strong electron-phonon coupling.

Rare-earth perovskite nickelates show intriguing metal–insulator transitions, whose mechanism remains elusive. Here, Bisogni et al. evidenced a 3d⁸ Ni configuration together with abundance of oxygen 2p holes in the ground state of a NdNiO₃thin film, suggesting a negative charge-transfer scenario.

Two-dimensional electron systems in oxide heterostructures have complex interactions that, once well understood, are expected to result in a powerful platform for electronic devices. Luo et al. show how near-field optical microscopy can perform high-resolution imaging of conducting regions in LaAlO₃/SrTiO₃ interfaces.

The many strongly interacting degrees of freedom in transition metal oxides make it difficult to capture and describe the nature of their metal-insulator transitions. Li et al. show that a resonant magnetic X-ray nanoprobe gives access to local critical behavior that is difficult to detect otherwise.

The characteristic length scale and mechanism of the metal–insulator transition in nickelate superlattices is addressed, with implications for the design of oxide electronics.

A model oxide system based on high-quality heterostructures allows the ferroelectric field effect approach to be studied — including a switch between superconducting and normal modes.

Negative capacitance is observed in a model system of multidomain ferroelectric–dielectric superlattices; the multidomain state can increase the temperature range over which negative capacitance can be observed.

This Perspective addresses the properties of strongly correlated materials, with a particular focus on computational, synthetic and spectroscopic approaches.