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Static electricity: mysteries lurk within this everyday phenomenon

New superconducting diode gives greater control over the flow of electrons

Device based on two-dimensional oxide interface superconductors can be “edited” using atomic force microscope lithography

New model of ocean waves sheds fresh light on the spread of microplastic pollution

Waves that decay over time can transport particles vertically as well as horizontally

New class of magnons live a hundred times longer

Discovery could help in the development of on-chip quantum information technologies that can be scaled down to the nanoscale

Research headlines

Venus flytraps snap shut by rapid cell-wall softening

Altermagnets can turn neighbouring materials altermagnetic, too

A sketch of a chameleon patterned with faint red and blue diamonds sitting on top of a block of material patterned with strong red and blue diamonds

Interface between air and water gets a new twist

Illustration showing ball-and-stick models of water molecules near the interface between air and water. A large molecule at the centre has a squiggly-red-line signal coming out of its central red oxygen atom, representing the molecule's dipole, while a dashed line emerging from the other side, between the two angled hydrogen atoms, represents the twist angle of the molecule.

Pigeons’ immune system can sense Earth’s magnetic field, study suggests

Molecules become magnetic by accumulating iron

Switchable skyrmions light up terahertz communications

A chip-sized device that can switch between two topologically protected light structures opens up a route to wireless communications that cannot be scrambled by the environment

Altermagnetic insulator shows giant magneto-optical Kerr effect

Surprising result could accelerate the development of altermagnetic spintronics with potential applications in advanced memories and logic

Hyperuniformity can be altered by ‘weighting’ many-particle systems

Calculations reveal the richness of systems that have crystal-like and liquid-like properties

Scientists find a new critical point in supercooled water

X-ray experiments provide further evidence that water exists in two distinct phases

Want to make a peptide material go from soft to stiff? Just add water

Discovery could facilitate the large-scale fabrication of materials that adapt to changing conditions

IOP Publishing and Tsinghua University Presents

A Century of Excellence at Tsinghua University – Shaping the Future of Scientific Discovery with IOP Publishing. Find out more.

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Pollen dispersion study offers hope for hay fever sufferers

Studying how pollen is dispersed from trees when the wind blows could help urban planners mitigate future exposure to airborne pollen grains

Stoichiometric iron telluride is a superconductor: magnetic mystery is solved

Antiferromagnetism is caused by excess iron

Miniature magnets break field strength record

New coiled device could rival expensive magnet facilities, say scientists

Magnetic friction defies centuries-old law

Sensing and programmable metamaterials could benefit from discovery

Pressure quench increases superconducting transition temperature

New protocol could lead to ambient-pressure room-temperature superconductivity

Electrosolvation force can act over long distances

Attractive force between a pair of like-charged colloidal particles is measured

Geometry induces chirality in nickel – and magnons flow

Twisted nickel nanotubes use shape as the source of asymmetry

Fluid flow: how heat can move from cooler to warmer regions

New work could help design electronic devices in which heat can be guided in certain directions, minimizing heat loss

Surface contamination holds the key to a static electricity mystery

Carbon-rich “schmutz” determines how charge moves between objects made from identical insulating oxides

Photo of a speaker, which resembles a metallic plunger, suspending a tiny sphere of silica above a silica plate

Superfluid plasmon appears in a two-dimensional superconductor

New finding could advance our understanding of high-temperature superconductors

At low exciton density, a superfluid suddenly stops flowing

Physicists say they may have observed a supersolid phase in a superfluid

Illustration of excitons arranging into a solid pattern

Physicists demonstrate long-predicted exotic magnetic phases in 2D material

Observations of how magnetism behaves in atomically thin materials could pave the way for new generations of ultracompact magnetic technologies

A bursting bubble can make a puddle jump

In a breakthrough in droplet physics, researchers find a way to get centimetre-scale water droplets to jump into the air

Droplet scientists push the boundary between living and non-living matter

Systems governed by chemistry and physics, not biology, can behave in surprisingly lifelike ways, as Giorgio Volpe, Rob Malinowski and Joe Forth explain

Giorgio Volpe, Joe Forth and Rob Malinowski

Lunar magnetic field mystery may finally have an explanation

Physicists weren’t sure why Moon rocks brought back during the Apollo missions are more strongly magnetized than models predict

Three people standing in front of a green and grey cutaway model of the Earth's layers. Yellow lines representing magnetic fields spring out from the model Earth's poles.

Dark optical cavity alters superconductivity

Quantum fluctuations couple to stretching bonds

Photo of Columbia's magnetic force microscope

Read-out of Majorana qubits reveals their hidden nature

Mechanism could pave the way for more robust quantum computation, but questions remain over scalability

Microscope image of two quantum dots connected by a superconducting wire. Other circuitry elements are also visible on the chip.

Visible light paints patterns onto chiral antiferromagnets

New technique for manipulating domains helps pave the way towards antiferromagnetic data storage

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Condensed matter | School Boulder Summer School 2026: Geometry and Topology in Soft Matter Physics 6—31 July 2026 | Boulder, US
Condensed matter | Conference 3rd Edition Global Summit on Condensed Matter Physics (GSCMP2026) 24—25 August 2026 | Paris, France
Condensed matter | Workshop Hydrodynamic Approaches to Active Matter: Successes and Future Challenges (haam26) 9—13 November 2026 | Dresden, Germany

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