Electrical transport in non-centrosymmetric materials departs from the well-established phenomenological Ohm’s law. Instead of a linear relation between current and electric field, a non-linear conductivity emerges along specific crystallographic directions. This non-linear transport is fundamentally related to the lack of spatial inversion symmetry. Ohm’s law is one of the most established relations in Physics and […]
The urban heat island effect has become a critical issue in urban areas, intensifying heat-related problems and increasing energy consumption. Urban areas tend to experience higher temperatures compared to those of surrounding rural areas, this is known as the urban heat island effect. The elevated temperature in cities is primarily attributed to the high density […]
Condensed matter • DIPC Advanced materials • Quantum physics
The discovery of materials with topologically nontrivial electronic bands has led to high-throughput computational efforts that uncovered such bands in most known inorganic crystalline materials. Thus, in 2017, a team of researchers presented what they called Topological Quantum Chemistry (TQC), a new and complete understanding of the structure of bands in a material that links […]
A team of researchers has successfully synthesized the first 2D heavy fermion material. The new material is a layered intermetallic crystal composed of cerium, silicon, and iodine (CeSiI) . Heavy fermion compounds are a class of materials with electrons that are up to 1000x heavier than usual. In these materials, electrons get tangled up with […]
Spontaneously broken symmetries are at the heart of many phenomena of quantum matter and physics more generally. However, determining the exact symmetries that are broken can be challenging due to imperfections such as strain, in particular when multiple electronic orders are competing. This is exemplified by charge order in some kagome systems, where evidence of […]
Twisted bilayer and multilayer systems represent two-dimensional materials, where atom-thick layers of the same or different materials are superimposed and rotated by an arbitrary twist angle. Twisted bilayer graphene (TBG) represents arguably the most prominent physical system of this kind, the bilayers of transition metal dichalcogenides (TMD) the other. The effect of twisting two periodic […]
Global energy demand is expected to rise around 30% by 2040 according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). Hydrogen (H2) produced by the electrolysis of water, using renewable electricity, the so-called green hydrogen, has emerged as a promising energy vector to respond to this increasing energy demand with the potential to decarbonize transportation, heating, and […]
A cement is any of various substances used for bonding or setting to a hard material. A popular one, Portland cement, is a mixture of calcium silicates and aluminates made by heating limestone (CaCO3) with clay (that contains aluminosilicates) in a kiln. The product is then ground to a fine powder. When Portland cement is […]
The scattering of conduction electrons in metals owing to impurities with magnetic moments is known as the Kondo effect, after Jun Kondo, who analysed the phenomenon in 1964. This scattering increases the electrical resistance and has the consequence that, in contrast to ordinary metals, the resistance reaches a minimum as the temperature is lowered and […]
nanocolloids The increasing attention to the design and experimental development of self-oscillating matter is primarily motivated by the potential use of such systems in emerging technologies (e.g., light engines) comprising compact components and minimum energy consumption. Self-oscillation is the generation of a periodic change in a system fuelled by a steady, non-periodic power source. The […]