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.
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Stabilized perovskite phases enabling efficient perovskite/perovskite/silicon triple-junction solar cells
Nature Materials, Published online: 23 September 2025; doi:10.1038/s41563-025-02367-8
To address the phase instability issue of perovskites, ammonium propionic acid is introduced to enhance the phase stability of both perovskite layers in perovskite/perovskite/silicon triple-junction solar cells, resulting in improved efficiency and reproducibility.
Categories: Nanoscience News (<front>)
Structural constraint integration in a generative model for the discovery of quantum materials
Nature Materials, Published online: 22 September 2025; doi:10.1038/s41563-025-02355-y
This work presents SCIGEN, a machine learning framework integrating geometric constraints into material generation. The framework enables the discovery of stable quantum material candidates, and the authors synthesize two predicted magnetic materials.
Categories: Nanoscience News (<front>)
Pipe dream beam coming true
Nature Materials, Published online: 19 September 2025; doi:10.1038/s41563-025-02347-y
Delayed femtosecond photoemission from a single-walled carbon nanotube enables pulsed electron beams with an unprecedented combination of pulse duration and energy spread.
Categories: Nanoscience News (<front>)
Molecular afterglow imaging for biomedical applications
Nature Materials, Published online: 16 September 2025; doi:10.1038/s41563-025-02338-z
This Review discusses recent advances in afterglow materials for biomedical applications, the distinct imaging modalities that these agents enable and strategies to optimize their properties for improved disease diagnosis and therapies.
Categories: Nanoscience News (<front>)
Salt turns ice into a powerful flexoelectric material
Nature Materials, Published online: 15 September 2025; doi:10.1038/s41563-025-02328-1
The brine network in common sea ice boosts its flexoelectric response by three orders of magnitude, matching high-quality piezoelectrics and pointing to cost-effective energy harvesters for cold environments.
Categories: Nanoscience News (<front>)
Streaming flexoelectricity in saline ice
Nature Materials, Published online: 15 September 2025; doi:10.1038/s41563-025-02332-5
By doping ice with NaCl, it is shown that a flexoelectric coefficient of up to 10 μC m−1 is generated, enabling effective piezoelectric coefficients that are comparable to those of ceramics. This arises from the streaming current of quasi-liquid flow through grain boundaries from one side of the sample to the other.
Categories: Nanoscience News (<front>)
Terahertz light confined to the nanoscale with hafnium dichalcogenides
Nature Materials, Published online: 15 September 2025; doi:10.1038/s41563-025-02353-0
Terahertz technology has the potential to push the speed limit of future opto-electronic applications, but the large free-space wavelength of terahertz light hinders nanoscale device implementation. Now, the confinement of terahertz light to the nanometre scale is demonstrated using phonon polaritons in hafnium-based van der Waals crystals.
Categories: Nanoscience News (<front>)
In situ tissue stiffening as a model of early lung injury and disease
Nature Materials, Published online: 15 September 2025; doi:10.1038/s41563-025-02337-0
Extracellular matrix remodelling and densification are hallmarks of fibrosis that have been challenging to study ex vivo. Visible light-induced dityrosine crosslinking of native matrix proteins in viable lung tissues has now been shown to recapitulate local stiffening that characterizes early lung injury. This stiffening led to aberrant alveolar epithelial cell differentiation, mechanosensing and nascent protein deposition.
Categories: Nanoscience News (<front>)
Interstitial oxygen order and its competition with superconductivity in La<sub>2</sub>PrNi<sub>2</sub>O<sub>7+<i>δ</i></sub>
Nature Materials, Published online: 15 September 2025; doi:10.1038/s41563-025-02351-2
An electron ptychography and energy-loss spectroscopy study of La2PrNi2O7, a material that exhibits high-temperature superconductivity, is conducted.
Categories: Nanoscience News (<front>)
Ultraconfined terahertz phonon polaritons in hafnium dichalcogenides
Nature Materials, Published online: 15 September 2025; doi:10.1038/s41563-025-02345-0
The authors demonstrate deeply subwavelength light confinement in the terahertz spectral range by exploiting the strong light–matter coupling and hyperbolicity of phonon polaritons in hafnium-based dichalcogenides.
Categories: Nanoscience News (<front>)
Towards spin-wave integrated circuits
Nature Materials, Published online: 10 September 2025; doi:10.1038/s41563-025-02349-w
Borrowing from optical fibre design, ion implantation enables index-contrast guiding of spin waves, opening new opportunities in wave-based computing.
Categories: Nanoscience News (<front>)
Mikhail Eremets (1949–2024)
Nature Materials, Published online: 10 September 2025; doi:10.1038/s41563-025-02333-4
Pioneer of high-pressure physics and superconductivity.
Categories: Nanoscience News (<front>)
Frustration under the microscope
Nature Materials, Published online: 09 September 2025; doi:10.1038/s41563-025-02335-2
By tuning and mapping Josephson currents at the atomic scale, researchers uncover how competing superconducting phases in FeSe interfere, revealing the fingerprints of s±-wave pairing and frustrated Josephson coupling.
Categories: Nanoscience News (<front>)
Capturing the dance of nanoparticles in crystals
Nature Materials, Published online: 09 September 2025; doi:10.1038/s41563-025-02342-3
Phonon dynamics of self-assembled two-dimensional nanoparticle crystals is resolved by liquid-phase transmission electron microscopy.
Categories: Nanoscience News (<front>)
Re-entrant phase behaviour of organic semiconductors
Nature Materials, Published online: 08 September 2025; doi:10.1038/s41563-025-02348-x
Insights to elucidate the composition–behaviour relationship in organic photovoltaic materials are required. Here the phase behaviour of disordered polymer:small-molecule acceptor blends is studied and an extended model is invoked to understand the temperature–composition diagrams.
Categories: Nanoscience News (<front>)
Molecular engineering of two-dimensional polyamide interphase layers for anode-free lithium metal batteries
Nature Materials, Published online: 08 September 2025; doi:10.1038/s41563-025-02339-y
Two-dimensional polyamide/lithiated Nafion interphase layers assembled into ultrathin sheets show high-rate, high-capacity Li plating/stripping as well as high energy and power densities, enabling the fabrication of high-performance anode-free Li metal batteries.
Categories: Nanoscience News (<front>)
Accelerating development of polycyclic heteroaromatic emitters with small singlet–triplet energy gaps
Nature Materials, Published online: 05 September 2025; doi:10.1038/s41563-025-02352-1
A simple physical model based on electronic interactions between excited configurations enables the quick and reliable prediction of singlet–triplet energy gaps in polycyclic heteroaromatic emitters. Guided by this model, organic emitters with small singlet–triplet energy gaps can be designed for applications in organic light-emitting diodes with high efficiency and colour purity.
Categories: Nanoscience News (<front>)
Local photocrosslinking of native tissue matrix regulates lung epithelial cell mechanosensing and function
Nature Materials, Published online: 05 September 2025; doi:10.1038/s41563-025-02329-0
Using visible-light-induced crosslinking, a local stiffening approach is developed for ex vivo mouse and human lung tissue as an early lung injury model, directing epithelial cell mechanosensing, differentiation and nascent protein deposition.
Categories: Nanoscience News (<front>)
Magnetically actuated multimodal bioelectronic catheter for minimally invasive surgery and sensing
Nature Materials, Published online: 05 September 2025; doi:10.1038/s41563-025-02340-5
A magnetically steered flexible bioelectronic catheter enables minimally invasive surgeries in animal models with simultaneous metabolite sensing.
Categories: Nanoscience News (<front>)
Space-time crystals from particle-like topological solitons
Nature Materials, Published online: 04 September 2025; doi:10.1038/s41563-025-02344-1
A continuous mesoscale space-time crystal phase is reported from a nematic liquid crystal driven by light.
Categories: Nanoscience News (<front>)