Nature | Materials Note

Nature | Materials

Nature Materials is a multidisciplinary journal aimed at bringing together cutting-edge research across the entire spectrum of materials science and technology. Nature Materials covers all applied and fundamental aspects of the synthesis/processing, structure/composition, properties and performance of materials. Nature Materials provides a forum for the development of a common identity among materials scientists while encouraging researchers to cross established subdisciplinary lines. To achieve this, Nature Materials takes an interdisciplinary, integrated and balanced approach to all areas of materials research while fostering the exchange of ideas between scientists involved in different communities.

Thread Of Notes

String-sliding vibrational modes govern the boson peak and phonon anomalies in amorphous materials

String-like collective motions in disordered materials are shown to give rise to characteristic vibrational modes, providing a microscopic explanation for the boson peak and its impact on thermal and mechanical properties.

Chain entanglements enable regeneration of high-performance thermosets

Dense covalent networks enhance mechanical properties in thermoset materials but hinder recyclability. Glassy thermosets with load-bearing capacity driven by chain entanglements are shown, decoupling mechanical performance from crosslink density and enabling reprocessing and regeneration.

Material considerations of memristors at the nanoscale

Ilia Valov, a professor at the Institute of Electrochemistry and Energy Systems, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, and at the Forschungszentrum Jülich, talks to Nature Materials about the relationship between nanoscale structure, composition, electrochemistry and the properties and functionalities of memristors.

Strain-insensitive wet-tissue-adhesive biphasic bioelectronics for physicochemical monitoring and adaptive therapy

A stretchable, strain-insensitive elastomer–hydrogel bioelectronics platform enables simultaneous physical sensing, chemical monitoring and neuromodulation for closed-loop disease management in diabetic rats.

Ultralow-voltage electrochemical organic light-emitting transistors with pinned and wide lateral recombination

Organic light-emitting transistors require a large operating voltage and exhibit a narrow recombination zone, owing to inefficient charge injection. By incorporating an ion transport enhancer into light-emitting polymers, organic light-emitting transistors achieving <3.5-V voltage operation and a maximum recombination zone width of ~267 µm are realized.

Stretchable high-fill-factor silicon–liquid metal platform for multilevel visual acquisition and depth sensing

High-density stretchable pixelated electronics are promising for next-generation robotic vision. By integrating single-crystalline silicon pixels with finely patterned liquid metal interconnects on elastomeric substrates, a human-eye-inspired robotic vision system and a skin-mountable lens-free imaging system with multiscale visual acquisition and depth-sensing are realized.

High impact resistance in a high-entropy alloy with thermally stable hierachical heterostructures

Face-centred cubic high-entropy alloys with a core–shell heterostructure, uniformly distributed nanoscale precipitates and oxide nanoparticles in the shell are developed. The hierarchical microstructures are thermally stable up to 1,000 °C and show high impact toughness.

Boosting ionic conductivity of single-ion conductive polyelectrolyte elastomers via high-dielectric plasticizers

Polyelectrolyte elastomers support selective and leakage-free ionic transport, but suffer from low ionic conductivity. A solid-state dielectric additive is introduced to various polyelectrolyte elastomers, which increases ionic conductivity by two orders of magnitude and maintains elasticity and leakage-free properties.

In situ mechanical characterization of functional and architected materials

Recent developments in in situ micro- and nanoscale mechanical characterization, equipped with exceptional spatial and temporal resolution, are expanding frontiers in the study of functional materials, whose properties are largely defined by their nano- and microscale features. This Review presents a comprehensive overview of these characterization methods and highlights their applications in low-dimensional and architected materials.

Magnetoelectric microrobots for spinal cord injury regeneration

Microrobots made of human-induced pluripotent stem cells and magnetoelectric nanoparticles promote lesion repair and motor improvements after spinal cord injury in zebrafish and mice under magnetic guidance and stimulation.

Van der Waals strain hardening and large uniform tensile elongation in GaSe

Substantial strain hardening can be triggered in GaSe and other similar chalcogenide single crystals at particular loading directions inclined to the [0001] zone axis via alternating interlayer slip. This mechanism results in large uniform tensile elongation exceeding 40%, with the ultimate tensile elongation surpassing 70%.

UV and thermally stable hole-selective contacts with enhanced assembly density for inverted perovskite solar cells

Ultraviolet damage and the thermal instability of self-assembled monolayers hamper the durability of perovskite solar cells. Modifying the spacer units in these monolayers revealed the mechanisms of photodegradation and thermal degradation in non-conjugated and conjugated structures, respectively. Specifically designed spacer molecules can achieve highly efficient and stable perovskite solar cells.

Cross-material catalyst discovery via deep learning

A deep-learning framework unites knowledge from distinct catalyst families to predict an unexplored class of water-splitting catalysts, revealing an active single-atom catalyst that outperforms both the training and predicted material classes.

Watching excitons synchronize

The oscillating electric field emitted by excitons in layered antiferromagnets reveals how quasiparticles synchronize into collective coherence and shows that a complex multi-peak spectrum can arise from a single excitonic resonance dynamically modulated by spin and lattice excitations.

High-throughput in situ sizing and quantum yield determination of individual perovskite nanocrystals

Interferometric scattering microscopy combined with photoluminescence imaging enables the fast, high-throughput screening of size and quantum yield for thousands of perovskite nanocubes at the single-particle level across their entire life cycle.

A Sc2C2@C88-cluster-based ultra-compact multilevel probabilistic bit for matrix multiplication

Electric-field-controllable, stochastic alteration of multiple conductance states in a Sc2C2@C88 cluster is observed. A matrix-chain multiplication of two 4 × 4 state-transition matrices is demonstrated using this cluster with maximum error of less than 0.05.

Detecting linear dichroism with atomic resolution

An electron linear dichroism method uses electron energy loss spectroscopy with an atomic-sized probe and momentum transfer selection along two orthogonal directions to resolve orbital occupation at individual atomic columns in real space.

Strategies of high-accuracy memristor-based analogue computing in memory for artificial intelligence

Noise and non-ideal characteristics at the device and circuit levels lead to errors in memristor-based analogue computing. This Review dissects the computing error sources from memristor-based device, array and system levels, evaluates strategies to minimize errors, and draws a roadmap for large-scale deployment to accelerate AI applications.

Interface effects unlock unusual superconductivity in a light-element superconductor

A heterostructure comprising a trilayer of gallium, sandwiched between graphene and silicon carbide, exhibits Ising-type superconductivity driven by quantum confinement and interfacial orbital hybridization. This light-element superconductor retains its superconductivity under in-plane magnetic fields three times larger than the Pauli paramagnetic limit of conventional superconductors.

Field-resolved observation of exciton coherence in a van der Waals magnet

Coherent exciton dynamics in antiferromagnetic CrSBr are studied by petahertz field-resolved spectroscopy, revealing how laser-imprinted exciton coherence persists beyond excitation and is modulated by spin and lattice modes.

Fibrillar adhesion dynamics govern the timescales of nuclear mechano-response via the vimentin cytoskeleton

Nuclear deformation and mechano-signalling are regulated by the coupling of vimentin cytoskeleton to the extracellular matrix through fibrillar adhesions, modulating the timescale of mechanotransduction on force removal.

Narrow-bandgap acceptors with low energetic disorder achieve over 21% efficiency in organic solar cells

Narrow-bandgap acceptors with minimal energy loss and high short-circuit current density for organic solar cells are rare. Here a designed acceptor incorporated into ternary blends achieves low energy loss of 0.486 eV and high short-circuit current density of 28.82 mA cm−2, resulting in a 21.12% certified efficiency in organic solar cells.

Optical nanoscopy of spatiotemporal metal stripping cooperativity at single-ion and subparticle resolution

Complex coupled ion–electron interfacial processes are poorly understood but crucial to battery dynamics. Here an ion-localization optical nanoscopy that enables single-ion imaging at 50 nm spatial and 20-ms temporal resolution at the single-particle level is presented and used to observe metal stripping cooperativity on Zn anodes.