Researchers have found a new way to turn low-frequency light into higher-frequency terahertz waves using special quantum materials called topological insulators. By placing these materials inside tiny ring-shaped structures that boost light signals, they created both even and odd harmonics—something rarely seen before. This breakthrough could lead to better ways of generating terahertz light, which is useful for imaging, communication, and exploring new physical effects in advanced materials.

In a study published in Advanced Materials, a research team led by Academician YU Shuhong from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences reported a structure-function integrated design of nacre-mimetic alumina (Al2O3)-based (NMA) composites. This NMA composite material not only has unique color tunability and excellent wave transparency, but also achieves lightweight, high strength, high toughness, and outstanding impact resistance.

A research team from Yunnan University has developed a novel liquid metal-assisted heteroepitaxy method to grow high-quality perovskite crystals within mesoporous scaffolds. This breakthrough enables printable mesoscopic perovskite solar cells to reach a champion efficiency of 20.2% while maintaining 97% performance after 3000 hours under harsh conditions. The approach offers a scalable pathway to efficient, stable, and low-cost printable photovoltaics.

This study provides structural insights that inform the design and development of next-gen antidiabetic drug.

In a paper published in SCIENCE CHINA Earth Sciences, a team of researchers investigated a fine-scale lightning forecasting approach based on weather foundation models (WFMs) and proposed a dual-source data-driven forecasting framework that integrates the strengths of both WFMs and recent lightning observations to enhance predictive performance. Furthermore, a gated spatiotemporal fusion network (gSTFNet) is designed to address the challenges of cross-temporal and cross-modal fusion inherent in dual-source data integration. Experimental results demonstrate that the dual-source framework significantly improves forecasting performance compared to models trained solely on WFMs and outperforms both the ECMWF HRES lightning product and other deep-learning spatiotemporal forecasting models.

New study reveals leafy crops accumulate more resistance genes than fruiting plants, offering insight into safer agricultural practices.

Two unique hallmarks in non-Hermitian systems, namely exceptional points (EPs) and the non-Hermitian skin effect (NHSE), have attracted considerable attention, particularly regarding their interplay. Recently, researchers in China demonstrated that coupling two non-Hermitian systems, each exhibiting independent NHSE, can induce multiple pairs of EPs. This further realizes the manipulation of wave-function localization, which is experimentally characterized on integrated photonic platforms. This work may inspire new designs for photonic integrated devices based on non-Hermitian physics.