Materials

Latest articles

At extremely high pressure – hundreds of times higher than that found at the bottom of the ocean – boron arsenide’s thermal conductivity begins to decrease

Surprising heat transfer behaviour seen in new semiconductor under pressure

Chiral logic gates create ultrafast data processors

Devices that work using circularly polarized light are a million times faster than current data processing technologies

Defect suppression enables continuous-wave deep-UV lasing at room temperature

The first room-temperature continuous operation deep-UV laser diode could be used in novel sterilization systems and high-definition material processing

Research headlines

Water-based switch outpaces semiconductor devices

Laser pulses turn water temporarily into a metal

Chemists use synthetic protein to produce quantum dots at room temperature

Catalysis technique yields nanocrystals

Phasons boost thermal conductivity of incommensurate crystals

Phonon-like quasiparticles could be used in thermal logic circuits

A new type of solar cell based on heterojunctions between different crystalline phases of the same light-absorbing material

Phase heterojunction solar cell is a first

New photovoltaics concept is based on junctions between different crystalline phases of a light-absorbing perovskite material

Chiral varieties can be selected for production when feedstock is drawn away at specific speeds. The illustration depicts this and an analogous process used to describe the evolution of giraffes’ long necks due to the gradual selection of abilities to reach progressively higher for food.

Length selection produces single-chirality nanotubes

Long-sought goal could make nanotube-based technologies more accessible

Piezoelectric nanoparticles provide deep brain stimulation without invasive surgery

Piezoelectric nanoparticles that generate direct current when exposed to focused ultrasound provide therapeutic stimulation of deep tissue in the brain

Videos

Researchers at the Centre for Print Research

Bristol print innovators make a strong impression

A female photographer wearing glasses, holding a camera

Are we living in the Age of Glass?

DNA’s remarkable physical properties

Materials Briefing

Take a look inside the free-to-read digital edition of Physics World‘s materials briefing. Looking at how researchers in so many areas of materials science are working towards a more sustainable society

Explore more in materials science

Surface-science modalities shed new light on lithium diffusion in battery materials

Established surface-science tools could help industrial scientists to fast-track the evaluation of advanced materials for energy-storage applications

Conceptual image showing light-harvesting bacteria as coloured spheres emitting a bright flash of energy

Materials and nanotechnology: our favourite research in 2022

Nanobionics and lost angular momentum are on our list

Colour of flower oscillates with time to improve pollination

Flowers change from orange to pink and then back again

A van der Waals MTJ based on a semiconducting tungsten diselenide spacer layer less than 10 nm thick, sandwiched between two ferromagnetic iron gallium telluride electrodes

Large tunnel magnetoresistance appears at room temperature in a miniaturized magnetic tunnel junction

New work on 2D van der Waals materials could aid the development of next-generation non-volatile spintronic memories

Photo of ultrathin on-chip solar cells fabricated from a stack of semiconducting materials. The cells are coloured as green squares and include an ultrathin layer of light-absorbing GaAs, which is key to their radiation tolerance

Thinner solar cells are more robust to space radiation

Gallium arsenide-based photovoltaic could be used as a power source for satellites in demanding space environments

The new bowtie structure compresses light spatially. The nanostructures around it store it temporally. The result is a compression of light to the smallest scale to date

‘World’s smallest photon’ confined in dielectric nanocavity

New research could help in the development of optical chip architectures that consume less energy than their electrical counterparts

Fallen leaves help remedy iron deficiencies in plants

New spectroscopic measurements reveal the source of vital Fe²⁺ ions in soil

Superconductor spin-correlation measurement is claimed as a first

Electrons in Cooper pairs point their spins in opposite directions

Electrochemical cell could detect airborne SARS-CoV-2

Device could immediately warn occupants when even trace levels of the virus are present

Mushroom-based substrates create flexible and sustainable electronics

Fungal-grown mycelium skins provide a biodegradable substrate for electronic devices and could help reduce electronic waste

$Electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) of a crack edge$

Uncovering the tiny defects that make materials fail

Tomas Martin and Stacy Moore describe how complementary microscopy techniques can uncover why a material has failed

Sugar offers a sweet solution for patterning curvy microelectronics

Embedding tiny patterns in chunks of sugar avoids use of harmful chemicals

nanoparticle observed by electron holography

Counting individual electron charges could improve nanoparticle catalysts

High-precision electron holography technique identifies single electron charges of platinum particles on a metal oxide surface

Materials innovation on display in Boston

Delegates attending the Fall Meeting of the Materials Research Society will be able to explore the latest products and services for preparing, analysing and studying novel material...

Material memories can be erased

New mechanical annealing experiments will be important for improving the design of foams and emulsions commonly employed in the food and pharmaceutical industries