🔬 Category

cond-mat.mtrl-sci

2792 papers

Condensed matter physics and materials science form a dynamic partnership, exploring how the collective behavior of atoms gives rise to the unique properties of solids and liquids. This field bridges the gap between fundamental quantum mechanics and the practical engineering of everything from flexible electronics to superconductors, turning abstract theories into tangible innovations that shape our daily lives.

At Gist.Science, we process every new preprint in this category directly from arXiv to make these complex discoveries accessible to everyone. Our team generates both plain-language overviews and detailed technical summaries for each paper, ensuring that researchers, students, and curious minds alike can grasp the latest breakthroughs without getting lost in dense jargon.

Below are the latest papers in condensed matter and materials science, organized by their most recent publication dates.

The Key Steps and Distinct Performance Trends of Pyrrolic vs. Pyridinic M-N-C Catalysts in Electrocatalytic Nitrate Reduction

Through combined theoretical modeling and experimental validation, this study elucidates the distinct performance trends and rate-determining mechanisms of pyrrolic versus pyridinic M-N-C catalysts in electrochemical nitrate reduction, revealing that adsorption and protonation of nitrate govern the reaction while demonstrating the limitations of classical thermodynamic models in accurately predicting catalytic performance.

Qiuling Jiang, Mingyao Gu, Tianyi Wang, Fangzhou Liu, Xin Yang, Di Zhang, Zhijian Wu, Ying Wang, Li Wei, Hao Li2026-04-21🔬 cond-mat.mtrl-sci

Tunable electrocaloric effect in lead scandium tantalate through calcium doping

This study demonstrates that calcium doping in highly ordered lead scandium tantalate (PST) enables precise tuning of its phase transitions to induce both conventional and inverse electrocaloric effects, thereby expanding the material's effective cooling range from 263 K to 353 K for use in cascaded electrocaloric devices.

Youri Nouchokgwe, Natalya S. Fedorova, Pranab Biswas, Veronika Kovacova, Ivana Gorican, Silvo Drmovsek, Binayak Mukherjee, Uros Prah, Guillaume F. Nataf, Torsten Granzow, Mael Guennou, Hana Ursic, Jor (…)2026-04-21🔬 cond-mat.mtrl-sci

High-Pressure Tuning of Electrical Transport in Freestanding Oxide Films

This paper introduces a novel experimental platform for high-pressure transport measurements in freestanding oxide films, which reveals a complex, dimensionality-dependent pressure-driven phase diagram in SrIrO3 featuring distinct semimetal-insulator and insulator-metal transitions in 3D films compared to the pressure-robust insulating state of 2D monolayers.

Jingxin Chen, Xiang Huang, Zhihan Qiao, Jiao Li, Jiahao Xu, Haiyang Zhang, Deyang Li, Enyang Men, Hangtian Wang, Han Zhang, Jianyu Xie, Guolin Zheng, Mingliang Tian, Qun Niu, Lin Hao2026-04-21🔬 cond-mat.mtrl-sci

Impact of Absorption due to Zero-Field Splitting on Loss in Dielectrics: A Case Study in Sapphire

This paper proposes that transitions between zero-field-split states of paramagnetic impurities (such as Cr, Fe, and V) in sapphire generate magnetic absorption that contributes a loss tangent of 10−910^{-9}–10−810^{-8} at 4.5 GHz, suggesting this mechanism is a significant limiting factor for the coherence times of superconducting qubits.

Mark E. Turiansky, Chris G. Van de Walle2026-04-21🔬 cond-mat.mtrl-sci

Photoengineering the Magnon Spectrum in an Insulating Antiferromagnet

This study demonstrates that resonant above-bandgap optical excitation in the insulating antiferromagnet DyFeO3 induces a near-total collapse of the THz magnon gap by transiently reducing the exchange interaction by nearly 90%, thereby establishing a pathway for ultrafast, light-driven control of antiferromagnetic spin dynamics.

V. Radovskaia, R. Andrei, J. R. Hortensius, R. V. Mikhaylovskiy, R. Citro, S. Chattopadhyay, M. X. Na, B. A. Ivanov, E. Demler, A. V. Kimel, A. D. Caviglia, D. Afanasiev2026-04-21🔬 cond-mat.mtrl-sci

Approximate Excited-State Potential Energy Surfaces for Defects in Solids

This paper introduces and benchmarks an efficient approximation technique that quantifies electron-phonon coupling for solid-state defects using only excited-state forces at the ground-state geometry, demonstrating that key optical properties can be accurately predicted with minimal atomic displacements while establishing the one-dimensional accepting-mode Huang-Rhys factor as a strict upper bound.

Mark E. Turiansky, John L. Lyons2026-04-21🔬 cond-mat.mtrl-sci

Band structure picture for topology in strongly correlated systems with the ghost Gutzwiller ansatz

This paper introduces the ghost Gutzwiller variational embedding framework to bridge the gap between single-particle band theory and strong electronic correlations, enabling the efficient prediction of topological features in correlated materials and revealing novel phenomena such as topologically nontrivial Hubbard bands with distinct edge states.

Ivan Pasqua, Antonio Maria Tagliente, Gabriele Bellomia, Bartomeu Monserrat, Michele Fabrizio, Carlos Mejuto-Zaera2026-04-21🔬 cond-mat.mtrl-sci

Machine Learning Phonon Spectra for Fast and Accurate Optical Lineshapes of Defects

This paper demonstrates that machine learning interatomic potentials, fine-tuned on routine atomic relaxation data from first-principles calculations, can efficiently and accurately predict electron-phonon coupling and optical lineshapes for defects in solids, overcoming the computational bottleneck of traditional methods while resolving fine spectral details like those of the T center in silicon.

Mark E. Turiansky, John L. Lyons, Noam Bernstein2026-04-21🔬 cond-mat.mtrl-sci

Magnetic anisotropy and intermediate valence in CeCo5_5 ferromagnet

By combining DFT+UU with exact diagonalization of the Anderson impurity model to account for Ce4+^{4+}–Ce3+^{3+} valence fluctuations, this study successfully reproduces the experimental magnetic moment and uniaxial anisotropy of the CeCo5_5 ferromagnet, demonstrating the critical role of dynamical correlations in designing high-performance permanent magnets.

Alexander B. Shick (Institute of Physics, Czech Academy of Sciences, Na Slovance 2, 182 21 Prague, Czech Republic), Evgenia A. Tereshina-Chitrova (Institute of Physics, Czech Academy of Sciences, Na S (…)2026-04-21🔬 cond-mat.mtrl-sci