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The evolution of a Landau Fermi liquid into a non-magnetic Mott insulator with increasing electronic interactions is one of the most puzzling quantum phase transitions in physics 1 – 6 . The vicinity of the transition is believed to host exotic states of matter such as quantum spin liquids 4 – 7 , exciton condensates 8 and unconventional superconductivity 1 . Semiconductor moiré materials realize a highly controllable Hubbard model simulator on a triangular lattice 9 – 22 , providing a unique opportunity to drive a metal–insulator transition (MIT) via continuous tuning of the electronic interactions. Here, by electrically tuning the effective interaction strength in MoTe 2 /WSe 2 moiré superlattices, we observe a continuous MIT at a fixed filling of one electron per unit cell. The existence of quantum criticality is supported by the scaling collapse of the resistance, a continuously vanishing charge gap as the critical point is approached from the insulating side, and a diverging quasiparticle effective mass from the metallic side. We also observe a smooth evolution of the magnetic susceptibility across the MIT and no evidence of long-range magnetic order down to ~5% of the Curie–Weiss temperature. This signals an abundance of low-energy spinful excitations on the insulating side that is further corroborated by the Pomeranchuk effect observed on the metallic side. Our results are consistent with the universal critical theory of a continuous Mott transition in two dimensions 4 , 23 . The interaction strength in moiré superlattices is tuned to drive a continuous metal-to-insulator transition at a fixed electron density.

SignificanceEmerging neuromorphic computing with resistive switching devices is one of the promising technologies toward hardware-based artificial intelligence. VO2 has been demonstrated as a great candidate to emulate the spiking neurons because of the nature of its room-temperature metal–insulator transition and resistive switching. However, the fundamental understanding of the switching stochasticity in this strongly correlated material remains unaddressed. In this work, the inherent electrical and structural stochasticity in a VO2/TiO2 device has been unambiguously revealed by combining in situ transmission electron microscopy experiments and ex situ resistive switching measurement on the same device. We conclude that the randomly oriented monoclinic domains in insulating VO2 between each resistive switching is the key factor governing the stochasticity behavior. Vanadium dioxide (VO2), which exhibits a near-room-temperature insulator–metal transition, has great potential in applications of neuromorphic computing devices. Although its volatile switching property, which could emulate neuron spiking, has been studied widely, nanoscale studies of the structural stochasticity across the phase transition are still lacking. In this study, using in situ transmission electron microscopy and ex situ resistive switching measurement, we successfully characterized the structural phase transition between monoclinic and rutile VO2 at local areas in planar VO2/TiO2 device configuration under external biasing. After each resistive switching, different VO2 monoclinic crystal orientations are observed, forming different equilibrium states. We have evaluated a statistical cycle-to-cycle variation, demonstrated a stochastic nature of the volatile resistive switching, and presented an approach to study in-plane structural anisotropy. Our microscopic studies move a big step forward toward understanding the volatile switching mechanisms and the related applications of VO2 as the key material of neuromorphic computing.

Interactions between electrons and the topology of their energy bands can create unusual quantum phases of matter. Most topological electronic phases appear in systems with weak electron–electron interactions. The instances in which topological phases emerge only as a result of strong interactions are rare and mostly limited to those realized in intense magnetic fields 1 . The discovery of flat electronic bands with topological character in magic-angle twisted bilayer graphene (MATBG) has created a unique opportunity to search for strongly correlated topological phases 2 – 9 . Here we introduce a local spectroscopic technique using a scanning tunnelling microscope to detect a sequence of topological insulators in MATBG with Chern numbers C  = ±1, ±2 and ±3, which form near filling factors of ±3, ±2 and ±1 electrons per moiré unit cell, respectively, and are stabilized by modest magnetic fields. One of the phases detected here ( C  = +1) was previously observed when the sublattice symmetry of MATBG was intentionally broken by a hexagonal boron nitride substrate, with interactions having a secondary role 9 . We demonstrate that strong electron–electron interactions alone can produce not only the previously observed phase, but also other unexpected Chern insulating phases in MATBG. The full sequence of phases that we observe can be understood by postulating that strong correlations favour breaking time-reversal symmetry to form Chern insulators that are stabilized by weak magnetic fields. Our findings illustrate that many-body correlations can create topological phases in moiré systems beyond those anticipated from weakly interacting models. Strong electron–electron interactions in magic-angle twisted bilayer graphene can fundamentally change the topology of the system’s flat bands, producing a hierarchy of strongly correlated topological insulators in modest magnetic fields.

In powder bed fusion–electron beam melting, the alloy powder can scatter under electron beam irradiation. When this phenomenon—known as smoking—occurs, it makes the PBF-EBM process almost impossible. Therefore, avoiding smoking in EBM is an important research issue. In this study, we aimed to clarify the effects of powder bed preheating and mechanical stimulation on the suppression of smoking in the powder bed fusion–electron beam melting process. Direct current electrical resistivity and alternating current impedance spectroscopy measurements were conducted on Inconel 718 alloy powder at room temperature and elevated temperatures before and after mechanical stimulation (ball milling for 10–60 min) to investigate changes in the electrical properties of the surface oxide film, alongside X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy to identify the surface chemical composition. Smoking tests confirmed that preheating and ball milling both suppressed smoking. Furthermore, smoking did not occur after ball milling, even when the powder bed was not preheated. This is because the oxide film undergoes a dielectric–metallic transition due to the lattice strain introduced by ball milling. Our results are expected to benefit the development of the powder bed fusion–electron beam melting processes from the perspective of materials technology and optimization of the process conditions and powder properties to suppress smoking.

Long‐range regulatory elements and higher‐order chromatin structure coordinate the expression of multiple genes in cluster, and CTCF/cohesin‐mediated chromatin insulator may be a key in this regulation. The human apolipoprotein ( APO ) A1 / C3 / A4 / A5 gene region, whose alterations increase the risk of dyslipidemia and atherosclerosis, is partitioned at least by three CTCF‐enriched sites and three cohesin protein RAD21‐enriched sites (two overlap with the CTCF sites), resulting in the formation of two transcribed chromatin loops by interactions between insulators. The C3 enhancer and APOC3 / A4 / A5 promoters reside in the same loop, where the APOC3 / A4 promoters are pointed towards the C3 enhancer, whereas the APOA1 promoter is present in the different loop. The depletion of either CTCF or RAD21 disrupts the chromatin loop structure, together with significant changes in the APO expression and the localization of transcription factor hepatocyte nuclear factor (HNF)‐4α and transcriptionally active form of RNA polymerase II at the APO promoters. Thus, CTCF/cohesin‐mediated insulators maintain the chromatin loop formation and the localization of transcriptional apparatus at the promoters, suggesting an essential role of chromatin insulation in controlling the expression of clustered genes.

Near the boundary between ordered and disordered quantum phases, several experiments have demonstrated metallic behaviour that defies the Landau Fermi paradigm 1 – 5 . In moiré heterostructures, gate-tuneable insulating phases driven by electronic correlations have been recently discovered 6 – 23 . Here, we use transport measurements to characterize metal–insulator transitions (MITs) in twisted WSe 2 near half filling of the first moiré subband. We find that the MIT as a function of both density and displacement field is continuous. At the metal–insulator boundary, the resistivity displays strange metal behaviour at low temperatures, with dissipation comparable to that at the Planckian limit. Further into the metallic phase, Fermi liquid behaviour is recovered at low temperature, and this evolves into a quantum critical fan at intermediate temperatures, before eventually reaching an anomalous saturated regime near room temperature. An analysis of the residual resistivity indicates the presence of strong quantum fluctuations in the insulating phase. These results establish twisted WSe 2 as a new platform to study doping and bandwidth-controlled metal–insulator quantum phase transitions on the triangular lattice. Metal-to-insulator transitions are characterized in twisted WSe, revealing strange metal behaviour and quantum criticality at low temperatures.

Phase transitions connect different states of matter and are often concomitant with the spontaneous breaking of symmetries. An important category of phase transitions is mobility transitions, among which is the well known Anderson localization 1 , where increasing the randomness induces a metal–insulator transition. The introduction of topology in condensed-matter physics 2 – 4 lead to the discovery of topological phase transitions and materials as topological insulators 5 . Phase transitions in the symmetry of non-Hermitian systems describe the transition to on-average conserved energy 6 and new topological phases 7 – 9 . Bulk conductivity, topology and non-Hermitian symmetry breaking seemingly emerge from different physics and, thus, may appear as separable phenomena. However, in non-Hermitian quasicrystals, such transitions can be mutually interlinked by forming a triple phase transition 10 . Here we report the experimental observation of a triple phase transition, where changing a single parameter simultaneously gives rise to a localization (metal–insulator), a topological and parity–time symmetry-breaking (energy) phase transition. The physics is manifested in a temporally driven (Floquet) dissipative quasicrystal. We implement our ideas via photonic quantum walks in coupled optical fibre loops 11 . Our study highlights the intertwinement of topology, symmetry breaking and mobility phase transitions in non-Hermitian quasicrystalline synthetic matter. Our results may be applied in phase-change devices, in which the bulk and edge transport and the energy or particle exchange with the environment can be predicted and controlled.  A triple phase transition, where changing a single parameter simultaneously gives rise to metal–insulator, topological and a parity–time symmetry-breaking phase transitions, is observed in non-Hermitian Floquet quasicrystals.

An explicit topology optimization-based design paradigm is proposed for the design of photonic topological crystalline insulators (TCIs). To strictly guarantee the topological property, rational engineering of symmetry-indicators is carried out by mathematical programming, which simultaneously maximizes the width of nontrivial topological band gaps and achieves the desired quantized bulk polarization. Our approach is successfully applied to design photonic TCIs with time-reversal symmetry in two-dimensional point groups, higher-order magnetic TCIs, and higher-order photonic TCIs. This methodology paves the way for inverse design of optimized photonic/phononic, multiphysics, and multifunctional three-dimensional TCIs.

An all-Si photonic structure emulating the quantum-valley-Hall effect is proposed. We show that it acts as a photonic topological insulator (PTI), and that an interface between two such PTIs can support edge states that are free from scattering. The conservation of the valley degree of freedom enables efficient in- and out-coupling of light between the free space and the photonic structure. The topological protection of the edge waves can be utilized for designing arrays of resonant time-delay photonic cavities that do not suffer from reflections and cross-talk.

We observe composite particles—chiral excitons—residing on the surface of a topological insulator (TI), Bi 2 S e 3 . Unlike other known excitons composed of massive quasiparticles, chiral excitons are the bound states of surface massless electrons and surface massive holes, both subject to strong spin–orbit coupling which locks their spins and momenta into chiral textures. Due to this unusual feature, chiral excitons emit circularly polarized secondary light (photoluminescence) that conserves the polarization of incident light. This means that the out-of-plane angular momentum of a chiral exciton is preserved against scattering events during thermalization, thus enabling optical orientation of carriers even at room temperature. The discovery of chiral excitons adds to the potential of TIs as a platform for photonics and optoelectronics devices. The protected electron states at the boundaries or on the surfaces of topological insulators (TIs) have been the subject of intense theoretical and experimental investigations. Such states are enforced by very strong spin–orbit interaction in solids composed of heavy elements. Here, we study the composite particles—chiral excitons—formed by the Coulomb attraction between electrons and holes residing on the surface of an archetypical 3D TI, B i 2 S e 3 . Photoluminescence (PL) emission arising due to recombination of excitons in conventional semiconductors is usually unpolarized because of scattering by phonons and other degrees of freedom during exciton thermalization. On the contrary, we observe almost perfectly polarization-preserving PL emission from chiral excitons. We demonstrate that the chiral excitons can be optically oriented with circularly polarized light in a broad range of excitation energies, even when the latter deviate from the (apparent) optical band gap by hundreds of millielectronvolts, and that the orientation remains preserved even at room temperature. Based on the dependences of the PL spectra on the energy and polarization of incident photons, we propose that chiral excitons are made from massive holes and massless (Dirac) electrons, both with chiral spin textures enforced by strong spin–orbit coupling. A theoretical model based on this proposal describes quantitatively the experimental observations. The optical orientation of composite particles, the chiral excitons, emerges as a general result of strong spin–orbit coupling in a 2D electron system. Our findings can potentially expand applications of TIs in photonics and optoelectronics.