One of the most fascinating ideas in physics is how we can turn heat into useful work. This is the basic principle behind all sorts of engines, like the ones that power cars or generate electricity in power plants. For over a hundred years, scientists have relied on the laws of thermodynamics to figure out […]
Most of the electronic devices we use every day, from smartphones to solar panels, depend on electrons moving smoothly through crystal structures. In recent years, however, researchers have discovered that stacking extremely thin materials in carefully chosen ways can produce completely new types of behavior that never appear in ordinary bulk materials. One of the […]
One of the most striking discoveries made by the James Webb Space Telescope, together with earlier observations from the Hubble Space Telescope, is that many galaxies in the young universe look very different from those we see around us today. Instead of graceful spiral disks or rounded ellipses, a large fraction of galaxies observed when […]
Chemistry • DIPC Advanced materials • DIPC Electronic Properties • Materials
Carbon is one of the most versatile elements in the periodic table. Beyond the familiar forms of graphite and diamond lies a rich family of carbon structures with surprising and useful properties. Among these, graphene, a single two-dimensional (2D) allotrope consisting in a layer of carbon atoms arranged in a perfect hexagonal lattice, has captivated […]
Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are highly potent and broad-spectrum antibiotics, found as components of the innate immune system in almost all forms of life. AMPs are short proteins, tiny compared with conventional antibiotics but extraordinarily effective: they bind to and disrupt bacterial membranes, which quickly incapacitates or kills a cell. For decades, the picture many scientists […]
In recent decades, researchers have developed advanced techniques to detect and manipulate individual photons. A particularly intriguing field examines how nanoscale light emitters, resembling artificial atoms, produce these photons. In this vein, a new study addresses a subtle question: when two such emitters release photons that are red-shifted due to energy loss, do these photons […]
Condensed matter • DIPC Advanced materials • Materials • Quantum physics
In the layered kagome metal CsV₃Sb₅, researchers have observed something that, until now, seemed almost impossible: robust quantum interference in the normal, non-superconducting state, persisting over distances of several micrometers. The interference is not the fragile single-particle kind seen in ultra-clean semiconductors at millikelvin temperatures. Instead, it behaves as if the entire stack of kagome […]
Catalysis • Chemistry • DIPC Computational and Theoretical Chemistry • DIPC Interfaces • Nanotechnology
When we think of atoms sitting on a surface, we tend to imagine them as fairly still, especially at very low temperatures (colder than liquid nitrogen, in fact). Yet in modern surface science we often discover the opposite: atoms can be surprisingly restless, gliding from place to place in ways that shape how materials grow […]
Imagine a sheet of material so incredibly thin it’s just one atom thick, yet it can capture and guide light in ways that defy our everyday intuition. This isn’t science fiction—it’s graphene, a wonder material made from carbon atoms arranged in a honeycomb pattern. Now, picture slicing this sheet into tiny ribbons, arranging them in […]
Imagine electrons as tiny particles zipping through a material, each carrying two key properties: charge, which powers our everyday electronics, and spin, like a little internal compass needle that points up or down. Charge flow is what we call electric current, but spin adds a magnetic twist, opening doors to advanced technologies like more efficient […]