Browse Articles

Synergizing Mn(IV)/Mn(III) Dual-Excitable Complexes and Chiral Cobalt Catalysis for Divergent Asymmetric Transformations

Tracing Lithophilic Sites: <i>In Situ</i> Nanovisualization of Their Migration and Degradation in All-Solid-State Lithium Batteries

Sustainable and Efficient Bicarbonate Electrolysis via Enhanced CO ₂ and Cation Availability on a Gas–Water Dual-Permeable Electrode

Diverse N ₂ Functionalization Enabled by an Unsymmetric Dititanium Complex

Enabling Proteins with Photocatalytic Functions via HisTag–Iridium Coordination

Operando HERFD-XAS of Bimetallic Perovskite Thin Film Interfaces

Caging the Chlorine Radical: Chemoselective Photocatalytic C(sp ³ )–H Functionalization Enabled by Terminal Cu–Cl Sites in a Metal–Organic Framework

Enhanced Thermopower in Single-Fullerene Junctions via Interface Engineering

Nickel-Catalyzed Aryl Borylations: Opportunities and Challenges for Innovation

Predicting the critical temperature of superconductors and materials classification with a balanced dataset without prior knowledge

The discovery of new superconductors through traditional trial-and-error experimental methods is both challenging and costly. A data-driven strategy can speed up the time-consuming exploration processes and also potentially reveal new insights into the complex correlations at play. Several material databases have been created for predicting the superconducting critical temperature (Tc), but they are confined solely to superconducting materials, limiting their prediction capabilities. In addressing this, we compiled a comprehensive open-source dataset encompassing both superconductors and non-superconductors. Our dataset contains 13 415 superconductors and 13 425 non-superconductors, each characterized by 212 features. Novel features, namely, CuO layers, ionic radius, heat of vaporization, cohesive energy, and thermal conductivity with respect to every element in the material were included. Another feature named “material type” was introduced to classify materials as low-temperature superconductors, high-temperature superconductors, and non-superconductors. Various machine learning techniques, including boosting and bagging methods, were employed to predict Tc. The light gradient boosting model emerged as the most effective, achieving a coefficient of determination of 93% and a mean absolute error of 2.93 K. While this novel, comprehensive material dataset is made available to enrich future research, a web application is also developed for predicting Tc of any material in relation to the material type based on the best of trained models.

Polymeric Lysosome-Targeting Chimeras (PolyTACs): Extracellular Targeted Protein Degradation without Co-Opting Lysosome-Targeting Receptors

Critical lateral dimension of nanopedestals for ultimate relief of strain from lattice mismatch in Ge on Si

Nanopedestals (NPs) that can ultimately relieve the strain in the lattice-mismatched heterostructures grown on them are investigated. The strain relief is achieved by the local compliance associated with the elevation of a nucleation site from a given substrate by a square prism NP and the edge-induced relaxation along its boundary. These are highly effective at nm scale and characterized with their lateral dimension, ℓp, and height, hp. The conventional critical thickness defined on two-dimensional flat surfaces is not valid on three-dimensional (3D) NPs. Under the boundary conditions semi-analytically optimized for the structure and the axial/interfacial compliance ratio depending on the structure parameters, a Ge on Si NP aligned to [001] of which the misfit is 0.042 is explored with a 3D modeling that relies on the local compliance and the edge-induced relaxation. These relief mechanisms dramatically increase the critical thickness of Ge on Si NP by the joint relaxation that reduces the strain energy of the Si NP as well as the Ge epilayer. For ℓp comparable to or less than the critical lateral dimension, ℓp.c, the critical thickness diverges to infinity and the Ge/Si heterostructures are eventually free from the strain relaxation by misfit dislocations. From the model, ℓp,c correlated to given hp for the ultimate strain relief is extracted. The limitation of the model for its universal applications is addressed.

Rational Terminal Engineering Enabled Vulnerable Exocyclic-Vinyl-Free Nonfullerene Acceptors for Sensitive and Durable Near-Infrared Organic Photodetectors

Magnus force induced magnetic diode effect in skyrmion systems

We show that skyrmions can exhibit a “magnetic diode effect,” where there is a nonreciprocal response in the transport when the magnetic field is reversed. This effect can be achieved for skyrmions moving in channels with a sawtooth potential on one side and a reversed sawtooth potential on the other side. We consider the cases of both spin-transfer torque (STT) and spin–orbit torque (SOT). When the magnetic field is held fixed, the velocity response of the skyrmion is the same for current applied in either direction for both torques, so there is no current diode effect. When the magnetic field is reversed, under STT driving the velocity of the skyrmion reverses and its absolute value changes. Under SOT driving, the velocity remains in the same direction but drops to a much lower value, resulting in negative differential conductivity. For a fixed current, we find a nonreciprocal skyrmion velocity as a function of the applied field’s sign, in analogy to the velocity–current curves observed in the usual diode effect. The nonreciprocity is generated by the Magnus force, which causes skyrmions to interact preferentially with one side of the channel. Since the channel sides have opposite asymmetry, a positive magnetic field can cause the skyrmion to interact with the “hard” asymmetry side of the channel, while a negative magnetic field causes the skyrmion to interact with the “easy” asymmetry side. This geometry could be used to create new kinds of magnetic-field-induced diode effects that can be harnessed in new types of skyrmion-based devices.

Crystal Surface Reactivity of Esterase@Zeolitic Imidazolate Framework Biocomposites

Origami-inspired electrohydraulic soft actuators: Multimodal robotic motion for jumping, crawling, and grasping

Soft robotic joints demonstrate significant potential for enhancing robotic performance in complex environments through safe and powerful actuation. However, simultaneously achieving high torque, rapid response, angular displacement range, and long-term reliability in a single soft actuator remains a significant challenge. To address these challenges, we present an origami-inspired electrohydraulic soft (OES) joint that utilizes electrostatic actuation to control dielectric fluid displacement, enabling full deployment of the folded structure for precise bending motions. The OES joints demonstrate a blocking torque of 48.7 mN m and a specific torque of 19.44 N m/kg. The joints can be parametrically designed to achieve specific maximum bending angles within a wide range (0°–163°), a feature not demonstrated by other flexible joints in the literature. These advancements facilitate diverse robotic applications: (i) a jumping mechanism attaining 13.9 body-height leaps with 0.17 body lengths per second forward velocity, (ii) a crawling robot achieving 1.23 body lengths per second locomotion, (iii) a bidirectional actuator with programmable angular output, and (iv) a compliant gripper combining operational safety with high-force grasping capabilities.

Using Mechanochemistry to Activate Poly(vinyl chloride) as a Mechanotunable Brønsted-Acid-Releasing Reagent for Organic Synthesis

Reversible magneto-ionics in crystallized W–Co20Fe60B20–MgO–HfO2 ultra-thin films with perpendicular magnetic anisotropy

We have investigated the electric field (E-field) induced modulation of perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA) in both amorphous and crystalline W/CoFeB/MgO/HfO2 ultra-thin films. We find that in the amorphous state, the E-field effect is volatile and reversible, which is consistent with the conventional electrostatic effect through charge accumulation and depletion. In the crystallized system annealed at 370 °C, we find that two effects are at play: a non-volatile and reversible voltage-induced effect on PMA and an electrostatic response. We discuss these results in terms of higher oxygen mobility at the crystallized CoFeB–MgO interface, which induces a non-volatile magneto-ionic response. Modulating PMA in crystallized CoFeB–MgO materials through ionic migration opens the path to integrating magneto-ionics in full magnetic tunnel junctions.

Triazacoronene-Driven Synthesis and Assembly of Two-Dimensional Vinylene-Linked Covalent Organic Frameworks Tuned with Conformational Rotation

Chirality reversal of exceptional points in a dual-channel graphene-tunable terahertz metasurface

In non-Hermitian systems, a special degeneracy known as an exceptional point (EP) arises from the coalescence of both eigenvalues and eigenvectors of the Hamiltonian. Chiral EPs, which exhibit polarization selectivity, have enabled numerous unique phenomena and potential applications, such as polarization selection, asymmetric energy transport, chiral enhancement effects, and topological manipulation. However, previous studies have typically realized chiral EPs by coupling two resonant structures with intrinsic chirality. This approach necessitates the separate fabrication of two metasurfaces and results in single-functionality devices, making flexible and controllable chiral reversal on a single platform challenging. To overcome this limitation, this study proposes a metasurface based on a triple-coupled resonator system. By tuning the Fermi energy of the graphene integrated at the gaps of two split-ring resonators, we modulate their dissipative loss, thereby achieving tunable chiral reversal on a single metasurface. Furthermore, by leveraging the phase-transition property of VO2, we realize chiral reversal in both transmission and reflection channels. This design not only overcomes the limitations of conventional methods but also paves the way for applications in reconfigurable chiral devices, polarization-selective photonic components, optical information processing with metasurfaces, and novel topological photonic platforms.