Nature Materials is a multidisciplinary journal aimed at bringing together cutting-edge research across the entire spectrum of materials science and technology. Nature Materials covers all applied and fundamental aspects of the synthesis/processing, structure/composition, properties and performance of materials. Nature Materials provides a forum for the development of a common identity among materials scientists while encouraging researchers to cross established subdisciplinary lines. To achieve this, Nature Materials takes an interdisciplinary, integrated and balanced approach to all areas of materials research while fostering the exchange of ideas between scientists involved in different communities.
Updated: 12 min 34 sec ago
Engineering a light-induced metastable state
Nature Materials, Published online: 01 August 2025; doi:10.1038/s41563-025-02303-w
Investigation of a long-lived metallic state in a low-dimensional cuprate demonstrates a strategy for on-demand light-driven metastability.
Categories: Nanoscience News (<front>)
Low-noise hole spin qubits in germanium
Nature Materials, Published online: 01 August 2025; doi:10.1038/s41563-025-02307-6
Noise is a key source of decoherence that hinders the scaling of quantum computers. Suppressing disorder in epitaxially strained quantum wells in germanium/silicon germanium heterostructures reduces the noise experienced by hole spin qubits.
Categories: Nanoscience News (<front>)
Memsensing by surface ion migration within Debye length
Nature Materials, Published online: 01 August 2025; doi:10.1038/s41563-025-02312-9
The electrostatic interactions in aqueous ionic media are screened by mobile charge carriers, limiting device design and operation speed. Here the built-in electric field is leveraged to dope ions into vanadium dioxide, triggering a surface insulator-to-metal transition, further enabling high-speed in-memory sensing in aqueous solutions.
Categories: Nanoscience News (<front>)
Defect repairing in lead bromide perovskite single crystals with biasing and bromine for X-ray photon-counting detectors
Nature Materials, Published online: 01 August 2025; doi:10.1038/s41563-025-02310-x
The understanding of defects in bromide-based perovskites remains elusive. Electric biasing and introducing bromide in the precursor solution during crystal growth is shown to significantly reduce defects in formamidinium lead bromide.
Categories: Nanoscience News (<front>)
Albumin-recruiting lipid nanoparticle potentiates the safety and efficacy of mRNA vaccines by avoiding liver accumulation
Nature Materials, Published online: 01 August 2025; doi:10.1038/s41563-025-02284-w
Ionizable lipids containing albumin-binding motifs are used in lipid-nanoparticle-based mRNA vaccines, facilitating lymph node enrichment and dendritic cell internalization to potentiate their efficacy and avoiding liver accumulation.
Categories: Nanoscience News (<front>)
Flatland wakes based on leaky hyperbolic polaritons
Nature Materials, Published online: 31 July 2025; doi:10.1038/s41563-025-02280-0
The authors combine the strong confinement of hyperbolic polaritons with leaky nano-waveguides to demonstrate directional in-plane emission of fast phonon polaritons and their acceleration and deceleration by tailoring waveguide dispersion.
Categories: Nanoscience News (<front>)
Bond-centric modular design of protein assemblies
Nature Materials, Published online: 31 July 2025; doi:10.1038/s41563-025-02297-5
Deep learning-based generative tools are used to design protein building blocks with well-defined directional bonding interactions, allowing the generation of a variety of scalable protein assemblies from a small set of reusable subunits.
Categories: Nanoscience News (<front>)
Computational design of bifaceted protein nanomaterials
Nature Materials, Published online: 31 July 2025; doi:10.1038/s41563-025-02295-7
Predictive protein design and experiments are combined to develop anisotropic bifaceted protein nanomaterials using pseudosymmetric hetero-oligomeric building blocks.
Categories: Nanoscience News (<front>)
Publisher Correction: Highly reversible extrinsic electrocaloric effects over a wide temperature range in epitaxially strained SrTiO<sub>3</sub> films
Nature Materials, Published online: 30 July 2025; doi:10.1038/s41563-025-02321-8
Publisher Correction: Highly reversible extrinsic electrocaloric effects over a wide temperature range in epitaxially strained SrTiO3 films
Categories: Nanoscience News (<front>)
Making data openly available
Nature Materials, Published online: 30 July 2025; doi:10.1038/s41563-025-02318-3
Seven years on from updates to our data sharing policies, we reflect on data-deposition-related changes to our published papers and continue to strongly encourage authors to make source data openly available.
Categories: Nanoscience News (<front>)
Amorphous chalcogenides in two dimensions
Nature Materials, Published online: 30 July 2025; doi:10.1038/s41563-025-02291-x
A low-temperature growth technique yields wafer-scale, nanometre-thin samples of amorphous noble metal selenides, unlocking opportunities to explore their intriguing properties and applications.
Categories: Nanoscience News (<front>)
Achieving small singlet–triplet energy gaps in polycyclic heteroaromatic emitters
Nature Materials, Published online: 25 July 2025; doi:10.1038/s41563-025-02309-4
Insight into the singlet–triplet energy gap and molecular structure relationship in polycyclic heteroaromatic molecules enables organic light-emitting diodes based on multiresonance thermally activated delayed fluorescence, with improved efficiency and roll-off.
Categories: Nanoscience News (<front>)
Modulation of optical loss leads to robust localization of light
Nature Materials, Published online: 23 July 2025; doi:10.1038/s41563-025-02298-4
Optical loss usually leads to dissipation, but has been shown, counterintuitively, to create strong light localization. This demonstration — realized by implementing a photonic arrangement with a special topology in a programmable integrated photonic platform — highlights loss as a powerful control of the topological properties of electromagnetic modes.
Categories: Nanoscience News (<front>)
Observation of non-Hermitian topology from optical loss modulation
Nature Materials, Published online: 23 July 2025; doi:10.1038/s41563-025-02278-8
Using a reconfigurable integrated photonic platform, the authors reveal the appearance of non-Hermitian topology and the existence of edge modes emerging exclusively from optical loss modulation.
Categories: Nanoscience News (<front>)
Atomic-scale frustrated Josephson coupling and multicondensate visualization in FeSe
Nature Materials, Published online: 22 July 2025; doi:10.1038/s41563-025-02290-y
Atomic-resolution scanned Josephson tunnelling microscopy on multigap superconductor FeSe single crystals is studied, demonstrating condensate-resolved imaging and tuning capabilities.
Categories: Nanoscience News (<front>)
An amorphous Li–V–O–F cathode with tetrahedral coordination and O–O formal redox at low voltage
Nature Materials, Published online: 22 July 2025; doi:10.1038/s41563-025-02293-9
Cathode materials for lithium-ion batteries typically possess octahedral coordination, which may exclude other possible solutions to degradation during deep cycling. A series of tetrahedral-framework-based amorphous Li–V–O–F materials are investigated, and shown to demonstrate O–O formal redox at 4.1 V.
Categories: Nanoscience News (<front>)
Deep learning unlocks antimicrobial self-assembling peptides
Nature Materials, Published online: 21 July 2025; doi:10.1038/s41563-025-02299-3
A deep-learning framework identifies peptides that show antimicrobial activity against multidrug-resistant bacteria, eradicate biofilms, and treat intestinal bacterial infection in mice.
Categories: Nanoscience News (<front>)
Pure-blue single-layer organic light-emitting diodes based on trap-free hyperfluorescence
Nature Materials, Published online: 21 July 2025; doi:10.1038/s41563-025-02294-8
Single-layer organic light-emitting diodes based on thermally activated delayed fluorescence are demonstrated, exhibiting pure-blue emission, high quantum and power efficiencies, and operational stability.
Categories: Nanoscience News (<front>)
Organic solar cells with 21% efficiency enabled by a hybrid interfacial layer with dual-component synergy
Nature Materials, Published online: 18 July 2025; doi:10.1038/s41563-025-02305-8
A hybrid cathode interfacial layer (AZnO-F3N) is developed, delivering 21.0% efficiency along with excellent stability, mechanical robustness and broad versatility, highlighting its potential to advance organic solar cells.
Categories: Nanoscience News (<front>)
Solvent co-intercalation in layered cathode active materials for sodium-ion batteries
Nature Materials, Published online: 18 July 2025; doi:10.1038/s41563-025-02287-7
Solvent co-intercalation into graphite anodes for sodium-ion batteries is common; however, intercalation into cathodes is much less explored. Here, using operando experiments as well as theory, solvent co-intercalation in a range of layered sulfides is investigated.
Categories: Nanoscience News (<front>)