News from Science China Press

A research team led by Professor Jiandong Ding at Fudan University has derived a set of equations for random degradation inspired by the classic Poisson raindrop problem, providing the first theoretical framework to quantify “acquired heterogeneity” — the uneven degradation that emerges during service rather than from manufacturing defects. Applying this framework to biodegradable metal stents, the team discovered that coating iron with polylactide (PLA) increases the corrosion rate by 3-fold but reduces corrosion inhomogeneity by 4,000-fold in blood-mimetic medium, paradoxically leading to later device fracture despite faster degradation. The resulting metal–polymer composite stent was validated in preclinical porcine studies, clinical trials involving 1,108 patients across multiple cohorts, and 5-year follow-up of 45 first-in-human cases, demonstrating safety, durability, and reliability. The theoretical framework is, in principle, applicable to any field where random spatiotemporal variability undermines system performance, from ship corrosion and bridge fracture to climate variability and big data analytics.

The FAST All Sky HI Survey (FASHI) team has released its second data set (DR2), cataloging 156,411 extragalactic neutral hydrogen (HI) sources over ~19,500 square degrees — nearly half the entire sky. The number of detected sources is nearly four times that of the first data release (DR1) and five times that of the Arecibo ALFALFA survey. With a median sensitivity of 0.57 mJy/beam, FASHI DR2 represents the largest and most sensitive blind HI survey ever conducted, providing a landmark dataset for studies of galaxy evolution, cosmology, and large scale structure in the local Universe.

Researchers at Wuhan University developed a molecular-sieve-assisted confined molten-salt route to grow 2.66 nm Na₂Nb₄O₁₁ single-crystal sheets. Devices made from the material combined sensitive ultraviolet detection with millisecond response and stable cycling, and enabled UV imaging and proof-of-concept two-wavelength physical-layer information encoding.

Researchers from Soochow University in China have developed a fast vapor-deposition strategy to fabricate twisted vertical heterostructures (TVHs) from two-dimensional organic crystals. By precisely controlling the deposition temperature through adjusting diffusion distance, the yield of vertical epitaxial structures is dramatically increased from below 20% to over 70%. The resulting TVHs exhibit a fixed 45° twist angle between crystal layers, enabling color-tunable interlayer coupling emission that ranges from blue to yellow-green. This work provides a practical approach for kinetic control of vertical heteroepitaxy and lays a material foundation for integrated photonics applications.

Using seawater for large-scale electrolysis offers a highly promising route for sustainable energy systems, but aggressive chloride ions typically cause rapid degradation of conventional anodic catalysts. Researchers from Hainan University and Swinburne University of Technology have developed a self-stabilizing boron-doped high-entropy selenide for the anodic oxygen evolution reaction. By coupling dynamic valence oscillations for active-site protection with a robust selenate layer to repel chloride, this catalyst achieves over 1000 hours of continuous operation at industrial-level currents in a harsh seawater environment.

Nanoporous carbon materials have attracted significant interest for applications in lightweight structural materials, microdevices, and bio-integrated systems due to their low density, chemical stability, electrical conductivity, and tunable mechanical properties. However, existing fabrication approaches often struggle to simultaneously achieve precise patterning, controllable porosity, and desirable mechanical performance. A research team led by Professor Min Qiu at Westlake University has developed a new fabrication strategy, termed Mix-ice lithography (Mix-IL), that enables direct construction of nanoporous carbon structures with tunable pore architectures and complex geometries. The study has been published in Science Bulletin.

Researchers from Shanxi University and Nanjing University have demonstrated on-chip two-mode squeezed light at audio frequency as low as 60 Hz, bringing integrated quantum noise reduction into the audio-frequency band. A weak, orthogonally polarized electro-optic reference comb stabilizes the homodyne measurement phase without placing a bright locking tone at the quantum frequencies. The experiment observed approximately 1 dB of squeezing from 60 Hz to 5 kHz, reconstructed the two-mode covariance matrix, and verified entanglement using the positive partial transposition criterion.

Researchers developed WiFo-2, a wireless foundation model for heterogeneous future wireless systems. Pretrained on 11.6 billion CSI points, it surpassed fully supervised task-specific models in three zero-shot reconstruction tasks and used 1% of labeled data for nine downstream tasks. Its confidence estimates support reliable operation. A prototype validated three tasks across indoor and outdoor scenarios and bands spanning sub-6 GHz and millimeter-wave.