Two-dimensional semiconductors could enable highly scaled, low-power electronic devices, but their performance is often limited by damaged metal–semiconductor interfaces and severe Fermi-level pinning. Researchers at Beijing Institute of Technology have developed a reactive phase-transformed contact strategy that protects the semiconductor during metal deposition and subsequently converts the protective layer into a conductive PdTe₂ electrode. The approach reduces contact resistance in MoTe₂ transistors and restores ambipolar transport in WSe₂ devices, offering a scalable pathway toward high-performance 2D electronics.

Fruit shape determines market value in wax gourd (Benincasa hispida), but the genetic programs that make some fruits long and cylindrical while others turn out short and round have remained largely mysterious. 

Distributed sensor networks use data from multiple sensors to locate targets. However, tracking many targets at once requires sorting out which measurements belong to which targets across sensors, which is difficult without a centralized system. To address this problem, researchers from China have developed MASTER, a distributed optimization method that combines swarm optimization with contribution-based cooperation. Experiments show that MASTER achieves lower localization errors and more stable consensus than existing distributed methods.

Nanoporous carbon materials have attracted significant interest for applications in lightweight structural materials, microdevices, and bio-integrated systems due to their low density, chemical stability, electrical conductivity, and tunable mechanical properties. However, existing fabrication approaches often struggle to simultaneously achieve precise patterning, controllable porosity, and desirable mechanical performance. A research team led by Professor Min Qiu at Westlake University has developed a new fabrication strategy, termed Mix-ice lithography (Mix-IL), that enables direct construction of nanoporous carbon structures with tunable pore architectures and complex geometries. The study has been published in Science Bulletin.

Researchers from Shanxi University and Nanjing University have demonstrated on-chip two-mode squeezed light at audio frequency as low as 60 Hz, bringing integrated quantum noise reduction into the audio-frequency band. A weak, orthogonally polarized electro-optic reference comb stabilizes the homodyne measurement phase without placing a bright locking tone at the quantum frequencies. The experiment observed approximately 1 dB of squeezing from 60 Hz to 5 kHz, reconstructed the two-mode covariance matrix, and verified entanglement using the positive partial transposition criterion.