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The Fe intercalated transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD), Fe 1 / 3 NbS 2 , exhibits remarkable resistance switching properties and highly tunable spin ordering phases due to magnetic defects. We conduct synchrotron x-ray scattering measurements on both underintercalated ( x = 0.32 ) and overintercalated ( x = 0.35 ) samples. We discover a new charge order phase in the overintercalated sample, where the excess Fe atoms lead to a zigzag antiferromagnetic order. The agreement between the charge and magnetic ordering temperatures, as well as their intensity relationship, suggests a strong magnetoelastic coupling as the mechanism for the charge ordering. Our results reveal the first example of a charge order phase among the intercalated TMD family and demonstrate the ability to stabilize charge modulation by introducing electronic correlations, where the charge order is absent in bulk 2 H − NbS 2 compared to other pristine TMDs. 

The inside of a cell is very organized. Just as bodies contain internal organs, cells contain many different compartments, called ‘organelles’, each with its own specific role. Most organelles are surrounded by a membrane that keeps their contents separate from the cytoplasm, the water-based liquid inside the rest of the cell. Some organelles, however, are not bounded by a membrane. Instead, they act like tiny drops of oil in water, retaining their structure because they have different physical properties from the fluid around them, a phenomenon called liquid-liquid phase separation. One such organelle is the nucleolus, which sits inside the cell’s nucleus (a membrane-bound organelle containing all the genetic material of the cell in the form of DNA). The nucleolus’s job is to produce ribosomes, the cellular machines that, once transported out of the nucleus, will make proteins. Human cells start with 10 small nucleoli in the nucleus, which fuse together until only one or two larger ones remain. Previous research showed that nucleoli form and persist thanks to liquid-liquid phase separation, and they behave like liquid droplets. Despite this, exactly how nucleoli interact with each other and with the fluid environment in the rest of the nucleus remained unknown. Caragine et al. set out to measure the behavior and interactions of nucleoli in living human cells. Microscopy experiments using human cells grown in the laboratory allowed the positions, size and shape of nucleoli to be tracked over time. This also yielded detailed information about the smoothness of their surface. Mathematical analysis revealed that pairs of nucleoli normally moved independently of each other, unless they were about to fuse, when they invariably slowed down and coordinated their movements. In addition, altering the state of DNA in the surrounding nucleus also affected the nucleoli. For example, when DNA was less densely packed, nucleoli shrank and their surfaces became smoother. These results build on our knowledge of how cells are organized by showing, for the first time, that the environment within the nucleus directly shapes the behavior of nucleoli. In the future, a better understanding of how cells maintain healthy nucleoli may help develop new treatments for human diseases such as cancer, which are characterized by problems with this organelle. 

The theory behind the electrical switching of antiferromagnets is premised on the existence of a well-defined broken symmetry state that can be rotated to encode information. A spin glass is, in many ways, the antithesis of this state, characterized by an ergodic landscape of nearly degenerate magnetic configurations, choosing to freeze into a distribution of these in a manner that is seemingly bereft of information. Here, we show that the coexistence of spin glass and antiferromagnetic order allows a novel mechanism to facilitate the switching of the antiferromagnet Fe 1/3 + δ NbS 2 , rooted in the electrically stimulated collective winding of the spin glass. The local texture of the spin glass opens an anisotropic channel of interaction that can be used to rotate the equilibrium orientation of the antiferromagnetic state. Manipulating antiferromagnetic spin textures using a spin glass’ collective dynamics opens the field of antiferromagnetic spintronics to new material platforms with complex magnetic textures.