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Although solid oxide electrochemical cells can store electricity and convert fuels to electricity, their development is limited by long-term stability. Degradation is now eliminated by reversibly cycling between electrolysis and fuel-cell modes.
Direct imaging and characterization of propagating plasmons in high-quality graphene, encapsulated between two films of hexagonal boron nitride, has now been achieved together with the observation of very low plasmon damping.
Layered double perovskites are promising as solid oxide fuel cell electrodes because of favourable transport properties. Related layered materials are now used as high-performance anodes that exhibit redox stability when exposed to hydrocarbon fuels.
The inclusion of long-range electrostatic effects in the modelling of donor–acceptor systems now leads to a more accurate estimation of the energy landscape and open-circuit voltage of organic solar cells.
Enhancing the superconducting temperature is often the main driver of synthetic studies of novel superconducting materials. Now, an approach yielding an air-stable iron selenide system that superconducts up to 40 K is reported.
The lifting of valley degeneracy in the monolayer transition metal dichalcogenide WS2 is now demonstrated by the optical Stark effect, showing that each valley can be selectively tuned by up to 18 meV.
Soft acoustic metamaterials that consist of a concentrated suspension of macroporous microbeads and that show a broadband negative acoustic refractive index are now demonstrated.
Transdermal light-triggered activation of cell-adhesive peptides on the surface of implanted hydrogels alters cell–material interactions, such as cell adhesion and spatial patterning, and fibrous encapsulation and vascularization of the material.
Heavy alkaline-earth hydrides could be of interest as ionically conducting electrolytes for electrochemical applications. Barium hydride is now shown to exhibit fast ionic transport of hydride ions in a high-temperature and high-symmetry phase.
The direction of the current photogenerated in organic–inorganic perovskite films can be switched by poling the material with low electric fields that induce a reversible ion drift. Hybrid perovskites may thus find application as memristor devices.
A body-centred icosahedral quasicrystal has been assembled, by using molecular dynamics simulations, from a one-component fluid of particles interacting via a tunable, isotropic pair potential.
Molecular design rules are defined to obtain metal-free blue-emitting organic compounds that show thermally activated delayed fluorescence with high photoluminescence efficiency. An internal electroluminescence quantum efficiency of 100% is reached.
Optically detected magnetic resonance experiments show that single spins having a coherence time on the millisecond scale can be isolated in divacancy defects in silicon carbide at low temperature.
Defects in silicon carbide have recently been proposed as bright single-photon sources. It is now shown that they can be used as sources of single electron spins having long coherence times at room temperature.
Entropic elasticity, typical of rubbers and known to also occur in organic polymers with certain network structures, is now demonstrated for phosphate-glass fibres with highly anisotropic structures.
Although Li-rich layered oxides are attractive electrode materials for batteries, they suffer from voltage decay on cycling. A correlation between trapped metal ions in interstitial tetrahedral sites and voltage decay is established, which could prove useful for developing high-capacity electrodes without decay.
A high density of strong hydrogen bonds connecting two polymers that are homogeneously mixed in a thin film is shown to enhance the intrachain thermal conductance, boosting thermal transport in fully organic layers.
Three-dimensional analogues of graphene have recently been synthesized. The transport properties of such a Dirac semimetal, Cd3As2, have been studied, revealing an unexpected mechanism that suppresses backscattering dramatically.
Monolayer iron selenide grown on SrTiO3 has recently gained attention due to suggestive evidence it superconducts at high temperature. In situ electrical transport measurements now reveal a transition temperature above 100 K.