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Image of the 3D printed kagome tube, which is white and features a repeating structure

New cylindrical metamaterials could act as shock absorbers for sensitive equipment

Designing better semiconductor chips: NP hard problems and forever chemicals

We report from the Heidelberg Laureate Forum

Twistelastics controls how mechanical waves move in metamaterials

New technique could deliver reconfigurable phononic devices with myriad applications

Research headlines

Chip-integrated nanoantenna efficiently harvests light from diamond defects

Nearly all light emitted by nitrogen-vacancy centres can be collected, providing a boost for these room-temperature quantum technology platforms

An illustration showing how vibrations in one side of the splitter become coupled to the other side. The two waveguides are shown as long, narrow purple blocks that overlap for part of their length. In the area of overlap, a big blue-and-yellow wave envelope that enters the picture via one waveguide is split into two smaller-magnitude wave envelopes travelling through both waveguides.

Single-phonon coupler brings different quantum technologies together

Waveguide-style approach promises to pair the versatility of phononic quantum technologies with the tight control of photonic ones

Illustration showing the operation of the UVA detector

Wearable UVA sensor warns about overexposure to sunlight

Device is flexible and transparent to visible light

Three researchers with their new parachute

Kirigami-inspired parachute falls on target

New system does not need to drift to avoid turbulence

Quantum gas keeps its cool

New measurements on Bose–Einstein condensate could help us better understand how objects transition from being quantum and ordered to classical and chaotic

The swirling patterns in Vincent van Gogh’s “The Starry Night”

Quantum fluid instability produces eccentric skyrmions

New finding advances our understanding of complex topological quantum systems and could help in the development of next-generation memory and storage devices

Videos

Eco chic: clothing made from trees, inspired by spiders

Innovation in diamond applications from Element Six

Researchers at the Centre for Print Research

Bristol print innovators make a strong impression

The 2025 edition of Physics World Careers is packed full of advice for early-career scientists. Including a range of valuable advice, informative case studies and recruiter profiles, it demonstrates the variety of jobs that use a physics degree.

Explore more in materials science

Unlocking the potential of 2D materials: graphene and much more

This podcast features Antonio Rossi at the Italian Institute of Technology

Sosumo Kitagwa, Richard Robson and Omar Yaghi

Susumu Kitagawa, Richard Robson and Omar Yaghi win the 2025 Nobel Prize for Chemistry

Trio honoured for their work on metal-organic frameworks

Nike running shoe containing auxetic material

Is materials science the new alchemy for the 21st century?

Honor Powrie pays tribute to the work of materials scientists

A bell jar covers a funnel containing dark viscous material, a thermometer and a petri dish

How the slowest experiment in the world became a fast success

Stefan Hutzler and Louise Bradley explain how they turned the famous pitch-drop experiment into an outreach activity

A special type of crystal with oxygen-breathing abilities

‘Breathing’ crystal reversibly releases oxygen

New topotactic oxide material could be used in some clean energy technologies including fuel cells

Image showing a model city with various data transmission use cases highlighted. Base stations used to cover rural areas use sub-6G frequencies. Various base stations used in ultra-dense areas use microwave wavelengths. Satellite and vehicle-to-everything communications use millimetre wavelength. Holographic and remote surgery uses sub-THz to THz wavelengths. A set of circuits and signals at the bottom of the diagram shows how signals become noisier with conversion from one band to another.

Broadband wireless gets even broader thanks to integrated transmitter

Device can process signals at frequencies ranging from below 1 GHz to more than 100 GHz

Super sticky underwater hydrogels designed using data mining and AI

Researchers combine machine learning with data mining methods to create a record-breaking underwater adhesive hydrogel

Set of three images, one showing specks of light in an orderly array against a dark background (the atoms in the material) and two showing different-shaped clouds of fuzzy dots (the atoms alone)

Highest-resolution images ever taken of a single atom reveal new kind of vibrations

Images are the first experimental evidence of long-predicted low-energy atomic vibrations called moiré phasons in twisted 2D materials

Electrochemical loading boosts deuterium fusion in a palladium target

Benchtop accelerator links electrochemistry to fusion science

Artist’s impression of the photophoretic flyers in the mesosphere

Nano-engineered flyers could soon explore Earth’s mesosphere

Devices are levitated by sunlight alone

Crystals emitting deep-blue light. A scale bar at the bottom indicates that the crystals are millimetre-scale

Deep-blue LEDs get a super-bright, non-toxic boost

A new hybrid copper iodide semiconductor converts nearly all the photoenergy it receives into blue light

Series of diagrams showing different stages of graphite and diamond as they crystallize. A left to right arrow labelled "nucleation pathways" indicates the direction of progress of crystallization through the series. Graphite, shown in red, gradually forms stacks of disorderly rings. Diamond, shown in blue, gradually forms larger and larger regular crystals

Graphite ‘hijacks’ the journey from molten carbon to diamond

Machine-learning-based molecular simulations reveal unexpected crystallization pathway

Photo showing a small black chip of material sitting on a copper backing in a container

Physicists get dark excitons under control

New capability could make it easier to generate single pairs of entangled photons on demand using semiconductor quantum dots

Jiong Lu and Huihui Lin from National University of Singapore

Amorphous carbon membrane creates precision proton beams for cancer therapy

Ultraclean monolayer amorphous carbon can be used to generate high-current, low-scattering proton treatment beams

Diagram of the metalaser showing different emission profiles it can produce

New metalaser is a laser researcher’s dream

Nanostructured lasing system creates arbitrarily-shaped wavefronts, making it possible to control laser emission at will

Materials
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A palette of colours including blues, greens, reds, yellow, orange, pink, purple and various shades of black, grey and white. It looks a little like a Mondrian artwork

Stacked perovskite photodetector outperforms conventional silicon image sensors

New device could lead to sensitive, artefact-free imaging with improved colour fidelity

Composite image showing a carbon nanotube in the background, with graphs of the experiment's pulses and an electron-hole pair superimposed on top

Scientists image excitons in carbon nanotubes for the first time

New ultrafast optical microscope could aid the development of advanced optoelectronic devices and quantum technologies based on these nanomaterials

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