What if you could create new materials just by shining a light them? To most, this sounds fantastical, but to physicists investigating Floquet engineering, this is the goal. With a periodic drive, like light, it’s possible to ‘dress up’ the electronic structure of any material, altering its fundamental properties – such as turning a simple semiconductor into a superconductor. While experimentally proven, light-driven Floquet requires strong drives that almost vaporize the material while achieving only modest effects. But researchers have now managed to achieve strong Floquet effect with a periodic drive just a fraction of the power required for modest light-driven Floquet – using excitons. This alternative method pavers the way to applied Floquet physics and thereby exciting novel quantum devices and applications.  

For the first time and with unprecedented accuracy, a team of researchers from the University of Basel has observed unique energy flow mechanisms in a semiconductor material following excitation by extremely short laser pulses. Gaining a better understanding of these energy flow is vital for improving the efficiency of electronic devices and computer chips.

During brain development, neurons extend long processes called axons. Axons link different areas of the brain and carry signals within it and to the rest of the body. Growing axons “wire up” the brain by following precise paths through the tissue. Their navigation depends on chemical signals and the physical properties of their surroundings. How these signals work together has remained largely unknown. An international team of scientists has now shown that tissue stiffness controls the production of key signalling molecules in the brain. This discovery, recently published in Nature Materials, reveals a fundamental link between mechanical forces and chemical signalling. It could help scientists understand how other organs and body systems develop and may inform new medical approaches. 

A collaborative team led by Prof. Yi Xiong from Wuhan Textile University, Prof. Wei Zeng from Anhui University, and Prof. Shuo Jin from the Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, has proposed a hierarchically converged defect-engineering restoration strategy. By implementing this approach, the researchers constructed a multidimensional ZnO/Bi₂O₃/BiOCl/BP/MXene heterojunction photoelectrode framework, achieving highly sensitive photoelectrochemical-electrostatic dual-mode sensing. The work, entitled “Hierarchically Converged Defect Engineering with Sequential 2D Black Phosphorus/MXene Heterostructures for Sensitive Photoelectrochemical–Electrostatic Coupled Sensors”, was published in Research (2025, Volume 8).

Sum-frequency generation (SFG) is a powerful vibrational spectroscopy that can selectively probe molecular structures at surfaces and interfaces, but its spatial resolution has been limited to the micrometer scale by the diffraction limit of light. Here, we overcame this limitation by utilizing a highly confined near field within a plasmonic nanogap and successfully extended the SFG spectroscopy into nanoscopic regime with ~10-nm spatial resolution. We also established a comprehensive theoretical framework that accurately describes the microscopic mechanisms of this near-field SFG process. These experimental and theoretical achievements collectively represent a groundbreaking advancement in near-field second-order nonlinear nanospectroscopy, enabling direct access to correlated chemical and topographic information of interfacial molecular systems at the nanoscale.

As the global demand for clean and low-carbon energy grows, nuclear power is expected to play an increasingly important role. Yet the expansion of nuclear energy brings a persistent environmental challenge: the release of uranium into wastewater, mining effluents, and even the ocean. A new review paper published in Science of Carbon Materials provides the most comprehensive overview to date of how electrochemical technologies could help solve this problem by selectively capturing uranium in its most mobile and hazardous form.

Professor Qiming Sun of Soochow University and Researcher Manyi Yang of Nanjing University successfully achieved confined loading of highly dispersed Pt-FeO_x nanoparticles within nanosheet molecular sieves. This catalyst exhibited excellent catalytic performance in the dehydrogenation of methylcyclohexane and the hydrogenation of toluene, realizing hydrogen energy storage and release mediated by the "methylcyclohexane-toluene" reaction. The study shows that the Pt-FeO_x catalyst possesses excellent mass transfer performance; the introduction of FeO_x not only significantly lowers the activation energy barrier of the CH bond in methylcyclohexane but also regulates the formation of electron-rich Pt active sites to promote toluene desorption, while effectively inhibiting the aggregation and sintering of Pt nanoparticles, thereby significantly improving the structural and reaction stability of the catalyst. This work demonstrates the application potential of nanosheet molecular sieve-confined metal catalysts in organic liquid hydrogen storage reactions, contributing to the rational design and development of efficient catalytic systems for hydrogen energy technologies. The article was published as an open access Research Article in CCS Chemistry, the flagship journal of the Chinese Chemical Society.