Non-volatile memories will play a decisive role in the next generation of digital technology. Flash memories are currently the key player in the field, yet they fail to meet the commercial demands of scalability and endurance. Resistive memory devices, and in particular memories based on low-cost, solution-processable and chemically tunable organic materials, are promising alternatives explored by the industry. However, to date, they have been lacking the performance and mechanistic understanding required for commercial translation. Here we report a resistive memory device based on a spin-coated active layer of a transition-metal complex, which shows high reproducibility (∼350 devices), fast switching (≤30 ns), excellent endurance (∼10 cycles), stability (>10 s) and scalability (down to ∼60 nm). In situ Raman and ultraviolet-visible spectroscopy alongside spectroelectrochemistry and quantum chemical calculations demonstrate that the redox state of the ligands determines the switching states of the device whereas the counterions control the hysteresis. This insight may accelerate the technological deployment of organic resistive memories.

The observation of a high-mobility two-dimensional electron gas between two insulating complex oxides, especially LaAlO3/SrTiO3, has enhanced the potential of oxides for electronics. The occurrence of this conductivity is believed to be driven by polarization discontinuity, leading to an electronic reconstruction. In this scenario, the crystal orientation has an important role and no conductivity would be expected, for example, for the interface between LaAlO3 and (110)-oriented SrTiO3, which should not have a polarization discontinuity. Here we report the observation of unexpected conductivity at the LaAlO3/SrTiO3 interface prepared on (110)-oriented SrTiO3, with a LaAlO3-layer thickness-dependent metal-insulator transition. Density functional theory calculation reveals that electronic reconstruction, and thus conductivity, is still possible at this (110) interface by considering the energetically favourable (110) interface structure, that is, buckled TiO2/LaO, in which the polarization discontinuity is still present. The conductivity was further found to be strongly anisotropic along the different crystallographic directions with potential for anisotropic superconductivity and magnetism, leading to possible new physics and applications.

The wetting behaviour of surfaces is believed to be affected by van der Waals (vdW) forces; however, there is no clear demonstration of this. With the isolation of two-dimensional vdW layered materials it is possible to test this hypothesis. In this paper, we report the wetting behaviour of vdW heterostructures which include chemical vapor deposition (CVD) grown graphene, molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) and tungsten disulfide (WS2) on few layers of hexagon boron nitride (h-BN) and SiO2/Si. Our study clearly shows that while this class of two-dimensional materials are not completely wetting transparent, there seems to be a significant amount of influence on their wetting properties by the underlying substrate due to dominant vdW forces. Contact angle measurements indicate that graphene and graphene-like layered transitional metal dichalcogenides invariably have intrinsically dispersive surfaces with a dominating London-vdW force-mediated wettability.

We present here temperature-dependent Raman, x-ray diffraction and specific heat studies between room temperature and 12 K on single crystals of spin-ice pyrochlore compound Dy 2 T i 2 O 7 and its non-magnetic analogue Lu 2 T i 2 O 7 . Raman data show a "new" band not predicted by factor group analysis of Raman-active modes for the pyrochlore structure in Dy 2 T i 2 O 7 , appearing below a temperature of T c =110 K with a concomitant contraction of the cubic unit cell volume as determined from the powder x-ray diffraction analysis. Low temperature Raman experiments on O 18 -isotope substituted Dy 2 T i 2 O 7 confirm the phonon origin of the "new" mode. These findings, absent in Lu 2 T i 2 O 7 , suggest that the room temperature cubic lattice of the pyrochlore Dy 2 T i 2 O 7 undergoes a "subtle" structural transformation near T c . We find anomalous red-shift of some of the phonon modes in both the Dy 2 T i 2 O 7 and the Lu 2 T i 2 O 7 as the temperature decreases, which is attributed to strong phonon-phonon anharmonic interactions.