Research articles

Chemical ligation of synthetic polymers is achieved via supramolecular polymerization followed by dynamic covalent polycondensation in a process that does not require thermal activation.

Stacking-controllable 2D In₂Se₃ grown by chemical vapour deposition reveals a strong dependence of ferroelectricity on stacking order. A 2H/3R homojunction memristor achieves an on/off ratio one order of magnitude higher than that of pure-phase devices, offering opportunities for advanced ferroelectric memory applications.

When defect-mediated losses are mitigated, lithium niobate phononic crystal nanomechanical resonators can have intrinsic phonon lifetimes of up to 21 ms at gigahertz frequencies.

Gate-voltage sweeps drive a first-order sliding transition between Bernal-dominant and rhombohedral–Bernal mixed stacking in marginally twisted double-bilayer graphene, which allows for non-volatile on/off switching of the low-temperature ferromagnetic phase.

A scalable cryogenic shock exfoliation method for the fabrication of large and uniform rhombohedral graphene flakes is demonstrated.

Heat flows coherently through an atom-scale break junction of amorphous silicon dioxide at room temperature, reaching 40% of the quantum limit and revealing that structural disorder does not fundamentally impede atomic-scale phonon transport.

A beam-shift-based 4D EMCD method is developed that can map 3D spin vectors across individual atomic planes and reveal how competing spin Hamiltonian interactions drive asymmetric spin rotation in canted antiferromagnetic YFeO₃.

Multiscale physicochemical and electrochemical characterizations demonstrate that atomic-scale structural distortion and nanoscale short-range ordering govern the thermodynamic and kinetic components of potential hysteresis in Li||DRX cells.

A torsion-pendulum gravitational-force sensor with an optical microcavity readout leverages coupled photon–phonon effects to enhance sensitivity to the tiny gravitational pull from a millimetre-sized source mass.

Four-inch rhombohedral-stacked boron nitride wafers are reproducibly synthesized through a step-templated interfacial epitaxy strategy, exhibiting high-density, fast-speed and non-volatile memory performances.

Magnetic-resonance-responsive sensors comprising zinc ferrite nanoparticles embedded in hydrogel microparticles enable mapping of tissue stress, revealing that acute stress surges, rather than cumulative mechanical load, drive epithelial–mesenchymal transition and tumour remodelling.

Monolithic 3D integration of oxide semiconductor devices on a 200-mm wafer is demonstrated, enabling vertically interconnected logic and memory and supporting the design of an energy-efficient AI accelerator.

Innovative ligand engineering and thermally assisted intaglio transfer printing enhance charge injection and pixel resolution in stretchable quantum-dot light-emitting diodes, achieving high efficiencies and luminance while maintaining mechanical integrity under deformation.

This work demonstrates a parallelized four-qubit entangling gate on a room-temperature spin register, and it operates ten times faster than sequences of two-qubit gates with reduced errors.

This study demonstrates on-chip all-optical switching by integrating magnetic memory elements with photonic circuits, establishing a route towards fully integrated magneto-photonic systems for ultrafast and energy-efficient information technologies.

Structured light–matter interaction at the single-photon level is demonstrated in a coupled quantum-dot–micropillar system, enabling cavity-enhanced single-photon emission with spin-locked orbital angular momentum and tunable spin–orbit entanglement.

Charge-switching S-lipids generate S-lipid nanoparticles that are neutral or negative at physiological pH but become cationic in acidic endosomes, enabling nucleic acid delivery with reduced inflammation compared with conventional LNPs.

Single copper atoms on boron nanosheets dynamically and reversibly switch to clusters, enabling the direct conversion of methane to acetic acid with 97% selectivity and high activity without the requirement for carbon monoxide.

Impurities in a quantum exciton condensate create bound electronic states, as visualized in Ta₂Pd₃Te₅, that are analogous to spin impurities in superconductors, enabling microscopic control of excitonic quantum matter.

Interband-engineered quantum wells integrated with a resonant metasurface yield giant near-infrared-to-visible optical nonlinearities.