According to theory, a property called altermagnetism can be acquired by a nonmagnetic material that is adjacent to an altermagnet.
Category: materials
Inexpensive material compresses light, paving the way for photonic microcircuits in the terahertz range
A two-dimensional lamellar crystal composed of atomically thin layers of lead iodide (PbI2) could be used to manufacture a new generation of circuits that use light and mechanical vibrations (rather than electrons) to transmit information in the terahertz frequency range.
Researchers at the Brazilian Center for Research in Energy and Materials (CNPEM), in partnership with colleagues from the University of Lille (France) and other international institutions, have studied this technology and published their findings in Nature Communications.
The terahertz band corresponds to a low-energy region of the electromagnetic spectrum situated between infrared and microwaves. Despite this, it is considered crucial for developing high-speed communication technologies.
Elastic rules may explain why nematic crystals look ordered and disordered at once
Electronic nematicity is a phase of some crystalline solids in which electrons’ collective properties, such as charge or spin densities, organize themselves into ordered patterns, lowering the crystal’s rotational symmetry. This phase is found across a wide range of diverse materials, making nematicity crucial to understanding emergent solid-state phenomena, such as unconventional superconductivity and magnetism.
Lately, experimentalists have encountered a hurdle to understanding nematicity: despite exhibiting nematic order at macroscopic scales, at the microscopic level, many nematic materials seem to exhibit disorder instead.
To address this seeming paradox, theorists at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have invented a new way of looking at the interactions between nematicity and elasticity, incorporating aspects of elasticity theory, whose impacts on nematicity have previously been overlooked.
Magnetic fields can ‘revive’ superconductivity in nickelates, research reveals
A research team led by Professor Denver Li Danfeng, Associate Dean (Research and Postgraduate Education) of the College of Science and Associate Professor in the Department of Physics at City University of Hong Kong (CityUHK), has achieved a significant advance in superconducting materials.
The team has discovered a magnetic-field-induced “re-entrant superconductivity” phenomenon in infinite-layer nickelate superconductors, in which superconductivity—initially suppressed by a magnetic field—reappears at higher field strengths. This finding challenges the conventional understanding that magnetic fields suppress superconductivity and opens up new directions for exploring unconventional superconducting mechanisms and next-generation superconducting materials.
The findings are published in Nature, titled “Field re-entrant superconductivity in Eu-doped infinite-layer nickelates.”
Hidden 3D atomic structure of relaxor ferroelectrics revealed for first time
Materials called relaxor ferroelectrics have been used for decades in technologies like ultrasounds, microphones, and sonar systems. Their unique properties come from their atomic structure, but that structure has stubbornly eluded direct measurement.
Now a team of researchers from MIT and elsewhere has directly characterized the three-dimensional atomic structure of a relaxor ferroelectric for the first time. The findings, reported in Science, provide a framework for refining models used to design next-generation computing, energy, and sensing devices.
“Now that we have a better understanding of exactly what’s going on, we can better predict and engineer the properties we want materials to achieve,” says corresponding author James LeBeau, MIT’s Kyocera Professor of Materials Science and Engineering.
PCB prices have risen by up to 40% due to war in Iran, according to Reuters’ industry sources
According to “industry sources and executives” known to Reuters, the war in Iran is affecting the supply of materials that are crucial for Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs), which has made them shoot up in price. Reuters says that, cccording to Goldman Sachs, PCB prices in April shot up by as much as 40% since March.
According to the news agency, “Iran struck Saudi Arabia’s Jubail petrochemical complex in early April, forcing a halt in production of high-purity polyphenylene ether (PPE) resin—a critical base material used to manufacture PCB laminates.”
Rethinking robotics with physical intelligence
Today’s advances in robotics are often driven by breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and perception. But in complex and constrained environments, the limiting factor is often hardware, not software. Systems that rely on constant data processing, high-bandwidth communication, and centralized compute can face delays, power constraints, and vulnerabilities that limit performance or prevent mission success altogether.
DARPA is looking to tackle these challenges by embedding intelligence directly into the physical materials of robotic systems. A new Request for Information (RFI), calls on the research community to help define a new class of materials capable of intermixed sensing, adapting, and acting in real time without relying on continuous external computation or communication links.
While the RFI itself is exploratory, it is a first step toward a more immediate opportunity: an invite-only, in-person workshop planned for the summer 2026. Selected participants will have the chance to present their ideas, engage with DARPA, and inform future program directions.
Microscopic sensors uncover how liquids turn glassy without structural change
A scientific discovery by researchers at Tel Aviv University’s School of Chemistry offers a new perspective on a long-standing scientific mystery: how does a flowing liquid suddenly become a rigid, almost frozen material, without changing its structure? This phenomenon, known as the “glass transition,” has puzzled physicists for over a hundred years. The study proposes a new experimental approach to observing this elusive process—by tracking the motion of tiny particles that serve as microscopic “sensors” within the material.
The study was conducted by Prof. Haim Diamant and Prof. Yael Roichman of the School of Chemistry at Tel Aviv University, together with the research group of Prof. Stefan Egelhaaf at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf. The findings were published in the journal Nature Physics.