Magnesium rechargeable batteries potentially offer high-energy density, safety, and low cost due to the ability to employ divalent, dendrite-free, and earth-abundant magnesium metal anode. Despite recent progress, further development remains stagnated mainly due to the sluggish scission of magnesium-chloride bond and slow diffusion of divalent magnesium cations in cathodes. Here we report a battery chemistry that utilizes magnesium monochloride cations in expanded titanium disulfide. Combined theoretical modeling, spectroscopic analysis, and electrochemical study reveal fast diffusion kinetics of magnesium monochloride cations without scission of magnesium-chloride bond. The battery demonstrates the reversible intercalation of 1 and 1.7 magnesium monochloride cations per titanium at 25 and 60 °C, respectively, corresponding to up to 400 mAh g⁻¹ capacity based on the mass of titanium disulfide. The large capacity accompanies with excellent rate and cycling performances even at room temperature, opening up possibilities for a variety of effective intercalation hosts for multivalent-ion batteries.

Low-dimensional multiferroic materials hold great promises in miniaturized device applications such as nanoscale transducers, actuators, sensors, photovoltaics, and nonvolatile memories. Here, using first-principles theory we predict that two-dimensional (2D) monolayer group IV monochalcogenides including GeS, GeSe, SnS, and SnSe are a class of 2D semiconducting multiferroics with giant strongly-coupled in-plane spontaneous ferroelectric polarization and spontaneous ferroelastic lattice strain that are thermodynamically stable at room temperature and beyond, and can be effectively modulated by elastic strain engineering. Their optical absorption spectra exhibit strong in-plane anisotropy with visible-spectrum excitonic gaps and sizable exciton binding energies, rendering the unique characteristics of low-dimensional semiconductors. More importantly, the predicted low domain wall energy and small migration barrier together with the coupled multiferroic order and anisotropic electronic structures suggest their great potentials for tunable multiferroic functional devices by manipulating external electrical, mechanical, and optical field to control the internal responses, and enable the development of four device concepts including 2D ferroelectric memory, 2D ferroelastic memory, and 2D ferroelastoelectric nonvolatile photonic memory as well as 2D ferroelectric excitonic photovoltaics.

Low-dimensional multiferroicity, though highly scarce in nature, has attracted great attention due to both fundamental and technological interests. Using first-principles density functional theory, we show that ferromagnetism and ferroelectricity can coexist in monolayer transition metal phosphorus chalcogenides (TMPCs)-CuMP₂X₆ (M = Cr, V; X = S, Se). These van der Waals layered materials represent a class of 2D multiferroic semiconductors that simultaneously possess ferroelectric and ferromagnetic orders. In these monolayer materials, Cu atoms spontaneously move away from the center atomic plane, giving rise to nontrivial electric dipole moment along the plane normal. In addition, their ferromagnetism originates from indirect exchange interaction between Cr/V atoms, and their out-of-plane ferroelectricity suggests the possibility of controlling electric polarization by external vertical electric field. Monolayer semiconducting TMPCs thus provide a solid-state 2D materials platform for realizing 2D nanoscale switches and memory devices patterned with top and bottom electrodes.

Theoretical study reveals nonlinear photocurrent switching upon ferroic transition without breaking time-reversal symmetry.