Volume 23 Issue 6, June 2024

Adding homogeneously dispersed oxide nanoparticles to aluminium pushes its high-temperature strength up to 500 °C.

Noble gas atoms sandwiched in bilayer graphene are directly visualized with scanning transmission electron microscopy, revealing solid and liquid-like dynamics of two-dimensional cluster structures at room temperature under encapsulation.

Halide perovskite nanocrystal scintillators detect high-energy protons with sensitivity suitable for clinical applications.

Precision laser irradiation of liquid-crystal polymer networks with dynamic bonds enables reversible phase patterning to create multi-stimuli responsive materials towards wearable devices and information encryption.

Lyophilized lymph nodes are a natural scaffold to deliver chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells to tumour resection sites, where they serve as a natural T cell-supporting niche and enhance CAR T cell efficacy in reducing recurrence in preclinical tumour resection models.

In a multi-principal-element VCoNi alloy, premature necking during Lüders banding has been harnessed to produce rapid dislocation multiplication, leading to both forest hardening and hardening induced by regions of local chemical order. The result is ductility of 20% and a yield strength of 2 GPa, during room-temperature and cryogenic deformation.

Photolysis and ion migration under electrical bias cause intrinsic instability in halide perovskite solar cells. By harnessing materials that both capture and confine iodide and polyiodide ions at the perovskite surface, the stability of devices under ultraviolet irradiation, thermal–light conditions or reverse bias can be greatly increased.

Ultrathin and flat crystals of bismuth are grown between the atomically flat layers of a van der Waals material. These crystals exhibit outstanding electronic properties, including gate-tunable quantum oscillations of the magnetoresistance.

An interface modification strategy has been developed to uniformly distribute high-density sub-10 nm coherent MgO particles in an Al matrix, resulting in high strength and creep resistance at temperatures up to 500 °C.

Harnessing premature necking produces a rapid multiplication of dislocations to interact with local chemical orders for work hardening in VCoNi alloy, achieving ductility of 20% and yield strength of 2 GPa during room-temperature and cryogenic deformation.

Direct observation of noble gas structures has been achieved at room temperature using electron microscopy. This was enabled by trapping them between two layers of graphene, where they form two-dimensional clusters.

The authors demonstrate field-free magnetization switching in van der Waals heterostructures.

The authors utilize both static and ultrafast terahertz conductivity spectroscopy to address the character of the superconducting state of infinite-layer nickelates.

The authors report the inverse effect of chiral-induced spin selectivity in an organic material.

A light-induced polar electronic state is generated in Cr₂O₃; the symmetry reduction occurs on an ultrafast timescale, ruling out contributions from the lattice or spins.

Employing nonlinear, time-resolved terahertz spectroscopy to study condensate dynamics on Ta₂NiSe₅—a narrow-bandgap semiconductor and putative excitonic insulator—the authors reveal enhanced terahertz reflectivity upon photoexcitation and condensation-like temperature dependence below the structural transition critical temperature.

Current organic proton detectors have poor detection sensitivities due to low light yields and limited radiation toleration. Here the authors report a perovskite nanocrystal-based transmissive thin scintillator that can detect seven protons per second, enabled by radiative emission from biexcitons.

Iodide-related defects pose serious challenges to the irradiation, thermal, light or reverse-bias stabilities of perovskite solar cells. Here, the authors find that by using the iodide/polyiodide capture and confine effects of perfluorodecyl iodide interfacing with perovskites, inverted perovskite solar cells achieve much improved stabilities.

Oxygen redox cathodes deliver higher energy densities than those based on transition metal redox but commonly exhibit voltage fade on extended cycling. The loss of O-redox capacity and voltage fade is shown to arise from a reduction in O²⁻/O₂ redox process reversibility and O₂ loss.

Lithium-rich oxygen-redox cathodes demonstrate high capacities, but lose energy density when cycled, showing cation disordering and formation of nanovoids and bulk molecular O₂. These structural changes are shown to be a consequence of a kinetically viable and thermodynamically favoured local phase segregation mechanism.

Lack of local phase patterning in liquid crystal elastomers has hindered their broad implementation. The authors report a laser-induced dynamic crosslinking approach with allyl sulfide groups to achieve reconfigurable high-resolution patterning of multiple liquid crystalline phases in a single film.

Implants made from patient-derived lyophilized lymph nodes loaded with chimeric antigen receptor T cells improve T cell delivery and inhibit tumour recurrence.

An intelligent DNA nanodevice, composed of DNA origami nanosheets and a thrombin-responsive DNA fastener, accurately delivers the appropriate dose of tissue plasminogen activator following activation by distinct thrombosis events.