Condensed-matter physics articles from across Nature Portfolio

Metallic altermagnets — distinct from conventional ferromagnets and antiferromagnets — hold potential for advanced spintronic applications. Now, experiments reveal room-temperature altermagnetism with antisymmetric spin polarization in a metallic oxide.

Graphene in proximity with pentagonal PdSe₂ exhibits anisotropic and gate-tunable spin–orbit coupling, enabling a tenfold modulation of spin lifetime at room temperature.

Thermopower measurements on magic-angle twisted bilayer graphene reveal strong electronic correlations and their contribution to entropy.

The authors present a process that boosts the piezoelectric properties of ScAlN thin films by 3.5 times, enhancing their performance for use in acoustic devices. The technique is scalable, cost effective, and could enable advanced sensors, clocks, and communication technologies.

Gapless modes emerging from non-equilibrium phase transitions are predicted to diffuse rather than propagate as sound waves. Now, the diffusion of these modes and their suppression under symmetry breaking are confirmed in a polariton condensate.

X-ray magnetic circular dichroism is an element-specific technique that uses circularly polarized X-rays to probe the spin and orbital magnetic moments of materials and explore their magnetic structures, including spin textures and dynamic behaviours. This Primer looks at the fundamental principles of X-ray magnetic circular dichroism, its application in advanced imaging methods and in investigating a wide array of magnetic phenomena.

Metallic altermagnets — distinct from conventional ferromagnets and antiferromagnets — hold potential for advanced spintronic applications. Now, experiments reveal room-temperature altermagnetism with antisymmetric spin polarization in a metallic oxide.

Graphene in proximity with pentagonal PdSe₂ exhibits anisotropic and gate-tunable spin–orbit coupling, enabling a tenfold modulation of spin lifetime at room temperature.

Thermopower measurements on magic-angle twisted bilayer graphene reveal strong electronic correlations and their contribution to entropy.

Nanoscale, covalently bonded GeSe crystals can withstand up to 12.8% recoverable tensile strain through an atomic mechanism called reversible shuffle twinning, giving rise to anisotropic superelasticity.

A rift has occurred within the scientific community between two formerly close-knit fields: condensed matter physics and electronic device engineering. What started as a union to understand the fundamental optical and electrical properties of semiconductors has been split by divergent interests. While the partnership has produced revolutionary changes in the way that information is processed and consumed by an increasingly interconnected society, now the two disciplines rarely speak to one another. As the years have passed, condensed matter physics has become enamored with delicate electronic effects in increasingly complex materials and geometries to the detriment of realistic applications. Meanwhile, device engineering has remained steadfastly focused on room-temperature performance and overall efficiency, prizing incremental improvement over potential disruptive advances using alternative materials and physics. Recent advances in topological electronic systems—in particular those exploiting Chern insulators—while elegant, prompt a necessary reexamination of the device engineering needs and the associated metrics with the goal of establishing a commonality within the blooming field of topological electronics. The purpose of this Comment is to initiate such a reexamination in the hopes that, with a better understanding of future device needs, perhaps the two areas may reunite to usher in the next electronic revolution via the use of topological phenomena.

Multislice electron ptychography reveals ferroelectric microstructures with sub-ångström lateral resolution and nanometre depth resolution, directly imaging a ferroelectricity generated by anion displacements relative to the Nb sublattice.