NEWSROOM

Rice University researchers have shown that sub-nanometer wrinkles in graphene generate flexoelectric charge separation, reshaping local electrical behavior through curvature alone. Extreme bending produces polarization far stronger than in larger systems and may enable geometry-controlled electronics without chemical doping. Published in Advanced Materials.

Researchers at NC State have extended twistronics beyond van der Waals materials into strongly bonded crystalline oxides. By stacking sodium niobate membranes with twist angles controlled down to 0.1 degrees, and confirming results via synchrotron X-ray diffraction, the team found interlayer bonds distort the atomic lattice, shifting phase structure and domain configuration. The technique works at near-millimeter scale, far larger than typical twistronic devices, marking a re

Researchers at Würzburg's ctd.qmat Cluster of Excellence have built electronic components that mimic how the human brain learns — using an interface between two oxide materials, lanthanum aluminate and strontium titanate, that's insulating on its own but conductive where the two meet. By precisely controlling how current reshapes this interface, the team created a single nanoscale device that can switch roles: transistor, memory element, or capacitor, depending on how it's wi

Researchers at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) are the first to directly utilize orbital currents without the need for conversion of the orbital current into a spin current. “We have thus realized the first purely orbitronic device approach,” said Dr. Christin Schmitt, a scientist in the research group of Professor Mathias Kläui at the JGU Institute of Physics. Orbitronics is a promising technology for future memory devices, as it could enable the realization of lar

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, in collaboration with Stanford and Purdue, have demonstrated a powerful new way to control heat at the nanoscale. Using carefully engineered metamaterials — microscopic gold patterns on thin membranes — they achieved up to four times more heat transfer across a tiny gap compared to conventional setups.

Rice University researchers have developed a simple new technique to create nanoscale patterns on hard chip materials at room temperature. By layering anisotropic alpha-molybdenum trioxide crystals on silica and exposing them to an electron beam, the team induced controlled stress that forms highly ordered nanoscale wrinkles or ripples.