In the search for novel materials, the simulation of quantum matter is an extremely demanding computational task, which is expected to profit substantially from the surge of quantum technologies. Quantum algorithms for programmable quantum computers offer the most flexible approaches, but tailor-made quantum simulators are particularly well suited for large-scale simulations. For instance, tremendous efforts […]
Water is critical for life on Earth. Our own biology, the chemistry of our bodies, is based on it. Access to clean drinking water is a human right, and is included as one of the global 17 sustainable development goals for 2030. However, today, one in three humans worldwide does not have access to safe […]
Population III stars are a hypothetical population of extremely massive, luminous and hot stars with virtually no metals, except possibly for intermixing ejecta from other nearby population III supernovae. Such stars are likely to have existed in the very early universe (i.e., at high redshift) and may have started the production of chemical elements heavier […]
One feature of supramolecular chemistry is that of self-assembly, in which the structure forms spontaneously as a consequence of the nature of the molecules. Weak non-covalent bonds are fundamental for designing self-assembled organic structures with potentially high responsiveness to mechanical, light, and thermal stimuli. The contributions of multiple weak interactions control the ability of the […]
Teeth are common elements in museum collections because they are better preserved than other parts of the body, being available for most living and fossil species. And they are extremely useful. Dental morphology has an eminent role in taxonomy, as systematics studies strongly rely on dental diagnostic characteristics. Also, the enamel pattern of herbivore teeth […]
As candidates for high-density data storage and quantum computation, magnetic transition metal complexes have attracted extensive attention. It has been established that the atomic surroundings of the magnetic ions play a significant role and govern the magnetism of these magnetic complexes. One feature in particular, magnetic anisotropy, which describes the preferential orientation of the magnetic […]
Mermin–Wagner The demand for computational power is increasing exponentially, following the amount of data generated across different devices, applications and cloud platforms. To keep up with this trend, smaller and increasingly energy-efficient devices must be developed, which require the study of compounds not yet explored in data-storage technologies. The discovery of magnetically stable 2D van […]
Condensed matter • DIPC Interfaces • Materials • Quantum physics
Surfaces are at the frontier of every solid. They provide versatile supports for functional nanostructures and mediate essential physicochemical processes. Intimately related to two-dimensional materials, interfaces and atomically thin films often feature distinct electronic states with respect to the bulk, which is key to many relevant properties, such as catalytic activity, interfacial charge-transfer, and crystal […]
Chemistry • DIPC Computational and Theoretical Chemistry • Materials
Nonlinear optics is concerned with the optical properties of matter subjected to intense electromagnetic fields. For nonlinearity to manifest itself, the external field should not be negligible compared to the internal fields of atoms and molecules of which the matter consists. Lasers are capable of generating external fields sufficiently intense for nonlinearity to occur. Actually […]
A catalyst is a substance that increases the rate of a chemical reaction without itself undergoing any permanent chemical change. The study of enzymes has provided us many of the prototypical concepts of catalysis, including the idea that a catalyst lowers the barrier to reaction and thereby accelerates the approach to chemical equilibrium, without altering […]