Researchers from the Condensed Matter Physics and Complex Matter Physics departments of the Jožef Stefan Institute, in collaboration with partners from Belgium, France and Germany, have shown that the slow anion diffusion in anion-exchange reactions can be efficiently used to tune the disorder strength and the related electronic properties of nanoparticles. This was shown for the case of titanium oxy-nitride nanoribbons. By controlling the nitrogen content, which determines the chemical disorder through random O/N occupancy and ion vacancies, they effected the transition from “bad metal” to the superconducting state. This shows that with anion exchange, not only can the structural order be affected, but so can the physical and functional properties of these materials. The results were published in the journal ACS NANO.