Digital cold strain engineering opens a new route to the programmable control of materials

Strain engineering allows researchers to alter a material's electronic and optical behavior by changing its physical structure rather than its chemical composition. The approach is well established in crystalline materials, whose ordered atomic lattices respond predictably to deformation. Applying the same principle to amorphous materials is more difficult. Their atoms lack long-range order, and conventional thermal or mechanical treatments can cause crystallization, cracking, elemental segregation or damage at material interfaces.