Physical sciences articles from across Nature Portfolio

A catalyst with two cobalt components potentially opens the way to sustainable processes for manufacturing light olefins — key ingredients for making plastics and detergents.

Friction typically scales with load but magnetic systems can defy this rule. Sliding arrays of magnetic rotors reveal that energy dissipation peaks where competing magnetic orders dynamically clash. This non-monotonic magnetic drag arises from sliding-induced hysteresis, offering a blueprint for tunable, contactless braking at any scale.

By bridging motion dynamics and sensor perception, a simulation framework enables quadrupedal robots to navigate and map challenging real-world environments with great reliability and precision.

Here the authors report that the π-basic cavity of pillar[n]arenes can effectively stabilize bromiranium intermediates generated during olefin halogenation, confining them in a controlled microenvironment. This strategy overrides the intrinsic Markovnikov preference, enabling highly selective anti-Markovnikov halogenation.

Molten Carbon, existing only at extremely high temperatures and high pressures, has an exotic collective dynamic behavior. The authors reveal, via ab initio and machine-learning computer simulations, an unusual two-peak shape of longitudinal current spectral functions, which are related to two types of collective excitations.

Microsoft Research has developed a long-term data storage technique using borosilicate glass that leverages phase modifications to achieve unprecedented write speeds for glasslaser storage. They suggest data integrity for a lifetime of 10,000 years.

An article in Nature Physics reports how combining distinct transition metal dichalcogenide monolayers enables the formation of an emergent exciton crystal — the bosonic analogue of the fermionic Wigner crystal.

A catalyst with two cobalt components potentially opens the way to sustainable processes for manufacturing light olefins — key ingredients for making plastics and detergents.

Lead recycled from centuries-old ammunition provides raw materials for perovskite solar cells.

Owing to the low volatility and structural designability of ionic liquids, initial applications primarily focused on replacing molecular solvents to build safer electrolytes for lithium batteries. Ionic liquid-based materials have since expanded their application into electrochemical technologies such as electrodeposition and sodium and other battery systems.