Semiconducting transition metal dichalcogenides consist of monolayers held together by weak forces where the layers are electronically and vibrationally coupled. Isolated monolayers show changes in electronic structure and lattice vibration energies, including a transition from indirect to direct bandgap. Here we present a new member of the family, rhenium disulphide (ReS 2 ), where such variation is absent and bulk behaves as electronically and vibrationally decoupled monolayers stacked together. From bulk to monolayers, ReS 2 remains direct bandgap and its Raman spectrum shows no dependence on the number of layers. Interlayer decoupling is further demonstrated by the insensitivity of the optical absorption and Raman spectrum to interlayer distance modulated by hydrostatic pressure. Theoretical calculations attribute the decoupling to Peierls distortion of the 1T structure of ReS 2 , which prevents ordered stacking and minimizes the interlayer overlap of wavefunctions. Such vanishing interlayer coupling enables probing of two-dimensional-like systems without the need for monolayers.

Polymorphism, which describes the occurrence of different lattice structures in a crystalline material, is a critical phenomenon in materials science and condensed matter physics. Recently, configuration disorder was compositionally engineered into single lattices, leading to the discovery of high-entropy alloys and high-entropy oxides. For these novel entropy-stabilized forms of crystalline matter with extremely high structural stability, is polymorphism still possible? Here by employing in situ high-pressure synchrotron radiation X-ray diffraction, we reveal a polymorphic transition from face-centred-cubic (fcc) structure to hexagonal-close-packing (hcp) structure in the prototype CoCrFeMnNi high-entropy alloy. The transition is irreversible, and our in situ high-temperature synchrotron radiation X-ray diffraction experiments at different pressures of the retained hcp high-entropy alloy reveal that the fcc phase is a stable polymorph at high temperatures, while the hcp structure is more thermodynamically favourable at lower temperatures. As pressure is increased, the critical temperature for the hcp-to-fcc transformation also rises.

The size of nanocrystals provides a limitation on dislocation activity and associated stress-induced deformation. Dislocation-mediated plastic deformation is expected to become inactive below a critical particle size, which has been proposed to be between 10 and 30 nanometers according to computer simulations and transmission electron microscopy analysis. However, deformation experiments at high pressure on polycrystalline nickel suggest that dislocation activity is still operative in 3-nanometer crystals. Substantial texturing is observed at pressures above 3.0 gigapascals for 500-nanometer nickel and at greater than 11.0 gigapascals for 20-nanometer nickel. Surprisingly, texturing is also seen in 3-nanometer nickel when compressed above 18.5 gigapascals. The observations of pressure-promoted texturing indicate that under high external pressures, dislocation activity can be extended down to a few-nanometers-length scale.

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