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One of the attractions in studying oxide heterostructures is the unusual physical phenomena that they enable. It is now demonstrated that the enforced cation ordering in thin oxide superlattices leads to significantly enhanced magnetic ordering temperatures.

To find materials with large anomalous Nernst coefficients, which is useful for energy harvesting, it is common to focus on materials with large anomalous Hall coefficients. Here, Gong et al. find a material where the anomalous Nernst effect does not show the same antisymmetric behaviour as the anomalous Hall effect.

The ability to control the magnetic order in a material with an electric field will enable low-power non-volatile memories and new types of computer logic. Ryanet al. demonstrate that europium titanate under moderate strain exhibits strong magnetoelectric coupling that could be valuable to this endeavour.

Olivine iron phosphate (FePO₄) is widely proposed for electrochemical lithium extraction, but particles with different physical attributes demonstrate varying Li preferences. Here, the authors characterize the electrochemical lithiation and sodiation behavior of a series of FePO₄ particles with different morphology to identify critical features that enhance Li selectivity.

Structural properties have been a key factor that controls the electronic and magnetic behaviour at the interface of two oxide materials. Here the authors achieve a spatial control over these functional properties in oxides through the formation of octahedral superstructures in manganite superlattices.

Upon ultrafast irradiation, a (PbTiO₃)/(SrTiO₃) superlattice transforms into a complex supercrystal that contains periodicities of up to 30 nm in size and is stable in ambient. Creation and destruction, by heating, of the supercrystal is reversible.

Enhanced switchable ferroelectric polarization is achieved in doped hafnium oxide films grown directly onto silicon using low-temperature atomic layer deposition, even at thicknesses of just one nanometre.

Layered Ruddlesden-Popper structure nickelates R₄Ni₃O₁₀ (R = La,Pr) show an unusual metal-to-metal transition, but its origin has remained elusive for more than two decades. Here, the authors show that this transition results from intertwined density waves that arise from a coupling between charge and spin degrees of freedom

Artificially grown superlattices consisting of iron pnictide materials offer a strategy for tailoring their superconducting properties. The fabrication of compositionally modulated oxygen- and cobalt-doped BaFe₂As₂ heterostructures yields vertically aligned defects that introduce strong vortex pinning sites and enhance the materials’ critical current density.

A superlattice consisting of SrIrO₃ and SrTiO₃ is shown to display a giant response to sub-tesla external magnetic fields—a direct consequence of its antiferromagnetic nature.

Complex oxide films are highly anisotropic in the way they conduct electricity, which is due to phase separation. However, the origin of this metal–insulator phase coexistence has been unclear. Transport measurements now show that strain, rather than chemical inhomogeneity, is mainly responsible.

X-ray and neutron scattering measurements and ab initio molecular dynamics calculations show that the transition from an insulating phase to a metallic phase in vanadium dioxide is driven primarily by the entropic effects of soft anharmonic lattice vibrations, or phonons, which stabilize the metallic phase.