materials-science

Researchers self-assembled custom 14-sided silver nanoparticles into superlattices that freeze a transitional phase between FCC and BCC metal structures, and report deep-strong light-matter coupling at room temperature.

University of Hong Kong team shows ultrathin polycrystalline diamond membranes generate voltage when bent, overturning the century-old classification of diamond as non-piezoelectric.

Teams at Imperial College London, University of Michigan, and Tufts University transformed natural silk threads into plastic-like materials that outperform metal alloys, resist punctures like carbon-fiber composites, and polarize terahertz light for potential 6G telecommunications use.

Using atomic-resolution spectroscopy on Ni3In, researchers from Rice and Weizmann experimentally confirmed compact molecular orbitals as the drivers of flat-band quantum criticality.

University of Pennsylvania researchers demonstrated strongly nonlinear exciton-polaritons that switch optical signals at 4 femtojoules—a record low for 2D polariton systems—using a MoSe₂ monolayer inside a photonic crystal nanocavity.

A 120-qubit simulation finished in two minutes versus more than 100 hours classically, with the team also reporting direct observation of spin-charge separation on 62 qubits.

Using multi-slice electron ptychography on a PMN-PT alloy, MIT-led researchers directly imaged a hierarchy of polar and chemical structures, finding that polarization regions are much smaller than leading simulations predicted.

A Nature Energy paper from Nanchang University achieves 26.61% certified efficiency with cesium doping, while a private Chinese cell surpasses all single-junction silicon cells at 27.98%.

Researchers from TU Delft, HKU, and SUSTech published separate Nature Materials studies showing that interface engineering and controlled lattice distortion can simultaneously boost strength past 3 GPa and preserve meaningful ductility in martensitic alloys.

A PNAS paper from XPANCEO and Nobel laureate Konstantin Novoselov shows the van der Waals crystal As2S3 undergoes a refractive-index shift of 0.3 and expands up to 7% under ordinary light, enough to write 50,000-dpi patterns without lithography.

Researchers at Northwestern University have used aerosol jet printing to create flexible artificial neurons that generate biologically realistic signals and directly activate living neural tissue.

German researchers used molten salts and iodine vapor to build atomically ordered MXenes, boosting conductivity 160x over conventional methods.