Category archives: Science

Topological Quantum Chemistry, the band theory of solids is now complete

Topological Quantum Chemistry, the band theory of solids is now complete

Condensed matterMaterialsQuantum physics

By DIPC

Extended and refined by Bloch and others during the 1930s, Bloch’s theory, known as the band theory of solids, accounts very well for the conducting behaviour of materials. When atoms are joined together into a crystal, each of the individual quantum states of the atoms joins with the corresponding states in other (identical) atoms in […]

Materials for raising the temperature of the quantized anomalous Hall and magnetoelectric effects

Materials for raising the temperature of the quantized anomalous Hall and magnetoelectric effects

Condensed matterMaterialsPhysicsQuantum physics

By DIPC

Topological insulators are electronic materials that have a bulk band gap like an ordinary insulator but have conducting states on their edge or surface. The conducting surface is not what makes topological insulators unique, but the fact that it is protected due to the combination of spin-orbit interactions and time-reversal symmetry. Researchers are chasing efficient […]

Metric structures in General Relativity

Metric structures in General Relativity

Theoretical physics

By Carlos Shahbazi

Reference contains the following statement: “Ashtekar’s formulation of general relativity taught us to think of gravitational theories as theories of connections, on a bare manifold with no metric structure. […] The idea that general relativity has its deepest formulation as a connection theory suggested immediately a new approach to the unification of general relativity with […]

Recovering native chemical information from surface-enhanced Raman scattering

Recovering native chemical information from surface-enhanced Raman scattering

ChemistryCondensed matterPhysicsQuantum physics

By DIPC

For centuries, metals were employed in optical applications only as mirrors and gratings. New vistas opened up in the late 1970s and early 1980s with the discovery of surface-enhanced Raman scattering and the use of surface plasmon (collective electronic oscillations at the surface of metals) resonances for sensing. However, it was not until the 1990s […]

Geological phenomena implying dissolved species bring new insights on fundamental thermophysics

Geological phenomena implying dissolved species bring new insights on fundamental thermophysics

ChemistryCondensed matterGeosciences

By DIPC

Over geologic time scales, seawater transforms the basalt of the ocean floor by chemical attack. At the end of this alteration process, the basalt turns partly into clays and partly into dissolved salts in sea water. Lithium, a chemical element initially contained in basalt, will then be distributed between clay and seawater. This separation has […]

Enantioselective polymerization of a biodegradable polymer using a substituted aminoacid as a catalyst

Enantioselective polymerization of a biodegradable polymer using a substituted aminoacid as a catalyst

ChemistryCondensed matterMaterials

By DIPC

The idea that certain natural products such as rubber are composed of giant molecules, or polymers, consisting of many repeating units linked by covalent bonds arose largely from the work of the German chemist Hermann Staudinger (1881–1965) in the early 1920s. He convinced skeptical chemists of this idea partly by linking small organic molecules (monomers) […]