We have produced thin film samples of cubic ZnS by the chemical bath method. These samples were synthesized using zinc chloride, thiourea, sodium citrate and ammonia solutions at varied deposition time from 24h to 96h. X-ray diffraction (XRD), transmittance and photoluminescence (PL) analyses provided the physical characteristics of cubic ZnS films with crystal plane orientations (2 0 0) and (2 2 2), lattice parameters of 5.648 Å and an atomic plane distance d=1.412 Å. The grain size calculed are 16.53 nm and 17.12 nm. PL revealed deep defects in the gap with peaks in the visible, with prominent emissions at 430 nm (blue) and 510 nm (green). The measured transmittance of the films is 88.6%.

Glassy materials yield under large external mechanical solicitations. Under oscillatory shear, yielding shows a well-known rheological fingerprint, common to samples with widely different microstructures. At the microscale, this corresponds to a transition between slow, solid-like dynamics and faster liquid-like dynamics, which can coexist at yielding in a finite range of strain amplitudes. Here, we capture this phenomenology in a lattice model with two main parameters: glassiness and disorder, describing the average coupling between adjacent lattice sites, and their variance, respectively. In absence of disorder, our model yields a law of correspondent states equivalent to trajectories on a cusp catastrophe manifold, a well-known class of problems including equilibrium liquid-vapour phase transitions. Introducing a finite disorder in our model entails a qualitative change, to a continuous and rounded transition, whose extent is controlled by the magnitude of the disorder. We show that a spatial correlation length ξ emerges spontaneously from the coupling between disorder and bifurcating dynamics. With vanishing disorder, ξ diverges and yielding becomes discontinuous, suggesting that the abruptness of yielding can be rationalized in terms of a lengthscale of dynamic heterogeneities

Inborn errors of immunity (IEIs) are genetic disorders that underlie susceptibility to infection, autoimmunity, autoinflammation, allergy and/or malignancy1. Incomplete penetrance is common among IEIs despite their monogenic basis2. Here we investigate the contribution of autosomal random monoallelic expression (aRMAE), a somatic commitment to the expression of one allele3,4, to phenotypic variability observed in families with IEIs. Using a clonal primary T cell system to assess aRMAE status of genes in healthy individuals, we find that 4.30% of IEI genes and 5.20% of all genes undergo aRMAE. Perturbing H3K27me3 and DNA methylation alters allele expression commitment, in support of two proposed mechanisms5,6 for the regulation of aRMAE. We tested peripheral blood mononuclear cells from individuals with IEIs with shared genetic lesions but discordant clinical phenotypes for aRMAE. Among two relatives who were heterozygous for a mutation in PLCG2 (delEx19), an antibody deficiency phenotype corresponds to selective mutant allele expression in B cells. By contrast, among relatives who were heterozygous for a mutation in JAK1 (c.2099G>A; p.S700N), the unaffected carrier T cells predominantly expressed the wild-type JAK1 allele, whereas the affected carrier T cells exhibited biallelic expression. Allelic expression bias was also documented in phenotypically discordant family members with mutations in STAT1 and CARD11. This study highlights the importance of considering both the genotype and the ‘transcriptotype’ in analyses of the penetrance and expressivity of monogenic disorders.

We present an innovative template-free water-based sol–gel method to produce uniform mesoporous silica beads of millimeter size, which have tunable size, stiffness and porosity, and could be used for adsorption applications. Our protocol exploits an in-situ enzymatic reaction to produce spherical beads of hydrogel from a charge-stabilized suspension of silica nanoparticles confined in a millimetric drop suspended in a non-miscible oil. Once the gelation step is complete, the spherical bead of gel is cleaned from oil and deposited onto a hydrophobic surface and let dry. Separating the gelation to the drying steps ensures a spatially uniform gel and allows us to perform a solvent exchange before drying. For all beads, we observe a crack-free drying process leading to the formation of stiff quasi-spherical beads with diameter in the range 1 to 5 mm and Young modulus in the range (0.1‑2)GPa and narrow pore size distribution, centered around 10 to 25nm depending on the experimental conditions. Finally, to demonstrate the potentiality of these materials, we graft on the bead surface aminosilane molecules, and quantify their CO2 adsorption efficiency. Overall, the production method we have developed is simple, readily adaptable, and offers promising materials for adsorption, storage, catalysis and chromatography.

It has recently been shown that Terahertz sensors can effectively detect the spin resonances of Dirac fermions in graphene. The associated photovoltaic measurement technique allows for the investigation of the intrinsic spin-orbit coupling in graphene as well as its topological properties from microwave to Terahertz frequencies. In this work, using graphene/MoS₂-based Field-Effect Transistors, we observed a magnetic resonance photovoltage signal in the Gigahertz range that is independent on the gate bias. The dispersion of the associated spin-flip transitions remains intriguingly unaffected by the MoS₂ layer. In parallel, the spin-related signal consistently appears as a drop in photovoltage, regardless of the signal's polarity or origin, whether it is due to plasma wave rectification or thermoelectric effects. This behavior is interpreted as a decrease in the system's spin polarization due to spin-dependent recombination or scattering of photocarriers. Understanding the various photovoltaic signals in highly sensitive Gigahertz/Terahertz sensors paves the way for exploring spin-dependent mechanisms in two-dimensional quantum materials, influenced by proximity effects such as spin-orbit coupling, topology, and magnetism.