材料科学
Grain growth fundamentally shapes the microstructure of crystalline materials upon annealing, affecting their overall mechanical and functional properties. Recently, it has been rationalized that grain growth in polycrystals does not result…
Molecular nitrogen exhibits remarkable structural diversity near the polymeric transition, where multiple phases are metastable. Here, we report two new molecular phases. The first, $t\zeta$-N$_2$, is a polytype of monoclinic $C2/c$…
The electronic structure of materials is fundamentally governed by their crystal symmetry. While most research on two-dimensional materials has focused on hexagonal lattices, such as graphene, hexagonal boron nitride, and transition metal…
Transition metal dichalcogenides provide a versatile platform for tunable ferroic phenomena at the atomic scale owing to their reduced dimensionality. Here we investigate the structural, magnetic, and ferroelectric properties of bulk solid…
Cubic boron nitride (cBN) is a wide-bandgap polymorph of boron nitride whose optical response remains only partially understood due to the coexistence of indirect electronic transitions and strong exciton-phonon coupling. Using…
We report the fabrication and characterization of a Zr-based bulk metallic glass (Zr-BMG) clamp cell designed for high-pressure inelastic neutron scattering (INS) measurements. The INS spectra of the empty cell exhibit broad and featureless…
The ability to tune and switch magnetic anisotropy to a perpendicular orientation is a key challenge for implementing 2D magnets in spintronic devices. H-phase vanadium dichalcogenides V$X_2$ ($X$=Te, Se, S) are promising ferromagnetic…
Four-dimensional scanning transmission electron microscopy (4D-STEM) enables mapping of diffraction information with nanometer-scale spatial resolution, offering detailed insight into local structure, orientation, and strain. However, as…
Hafnia (HfO2) is a silicon-compatible dielectric material, yet stabilizing its desired but metastable ferroelectric phase remains challenging. Phase stability predictions by density functional theory (DFT) have provided crucial guidance,…
Quasicrystals, structures that are ordered yet aperiodic, defy conventional band theory, confining most studies to finite-size real-space numerics. We overcome this limitation with a configuration-space framework that predicts and explains…
This work presents electronic and magnetic properties of selected members in the cubic Laves phase series Nd1-xPrxCoNi and Ce0.25Pr0.75CoNi, together with the corresponding binary compositions (NdCo2, NdNi2, PrCo2, PrNi2, CeCo2, CeNi2),…
Designing materials with targeted properties remains challenging due to the vastness of chemical space and the scarcity of property-labeled data. While recent advances in generative models offer a promising way for inverse design, most…
Point defect engineering is widely used to tailor the electronic and transport properties of complex oxides, yet its influence on dislocation plasticity remains poorly understood. Here, we establish how donor (Nb) doping modifies…
Sliding ferroelectricity is a phenomenon that arises from the insurgence of spontaneous electronic polarization perpendicular to the layers of two-dimensional (2D) systems upon the relative sliding of the atomic layer constituents. Because…
In this work, we introduce a new class of chiral altermagnetic magnetoelectrics in structurally chiral, nonpolar altermagnetic systems and identify the experimentally well-characterized three-dimensional metal-organic framework…
The optical properties of defects in solids produce rich physics, from gemstone coloration to single-photon emission for quantum networks. Essential to describing optical transitions is electron-phonon coupling, which can be predicted from…
A description of electron-phonon coupling at a defect or impurity is essential to characterizing and harnessing its functionality for a particular application. Electron-phonon coupling limits the amount of useful light produced by a…
The ultrafast control of nanoscale spin textures such as magnetic domain walls or skyrmions is essential for advancing high-speed, high-density spintronics. However, imaging their dynamics will require a technique that combines nanometer…
Magnetic materials represent an essential ingredient for the contemporary industry. Apart from common material parameters such as magnetocrystalline anisotropy, coercivity, or saturation magnetization, magnetoelastic behavior is vital for…
Electrical transport in oxide thin films under high pressure remains largely unexplored due to the lack of a universal experimental strategy. Here we develop an approach that enables high-pressure transport measurements in freestanding…