Two-dimensional (2D) materials are extraordinary for two main reasons. One is the set of mechanical properties that makes those materials a versatile playground where multiple modelling objects are possible, from the thinnest membranes with minuscule bending rigidity to very stiff plates, all with very reproducible parameters. The other reason is that both the electronic and […]
Real life is sometimes very different from laboratory settings. Take superconductivity, for example. In order to reach, it you either need extremely low temperatures, extremely high pressures or a combination of both; something that makes very difficult to conceive an everyday application out of a laboratory. Something similar happens with other new materials, but in […]
Euclid is an ESA mission to map the geometry of the Universe and better understand the mysterious dark matter and dark energy, which make up most of the energy budget of the cosmos. The mission will investigate the distance-redshift relationship and the evolution of cosmic structures by measuring shapes and redshifts of galaxies and clusters […]
A silicate is any of a group of substances containing negative ions composed of silicon and oxygen. With this definition it is no surprise that silicates are a huge group. Natural silicates form the mayor component of most rocks, the bulk (90 %) of the Earth´s outer crust and one third of all minerals. The […]
The standard explanation of superconductivity goes more or less like this. Electrical resistance is due to collisions of the electrons (whether treated as particles or waves) with impurities, imperfections, and especially the lattice vibrations of the metal crystal. The lattice vibrations of the solid will decrease as the temperature falls, because the entropy, which represents […]
The absence of mirror symmetry, or chirality, is behind striking natural phenomena found in systems as diverse as DNA and crystalline solids. A remarkable example occurs when chiral semimetals with topologically protected band degeneracies are illuminated with circularly polarized light. In circularly polarized light, the tip of the electric vector describes a circular helix about […]
Transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) are layered compounds which can be thinned down to the single-layer limit. While mechanical exfoliation generates atomically thin TMD flakes possessing an area of a few square microns, chemical and physical methods provide high-quality monolayers on large-area substrates, which are suitable for actual technological applications. Similar to other two-dimensional materials, TMD […]
When you first study electromagnetism, all the electromagnetic waves you find are plane ones, waves in which the electric and magnetic fields are both orthogonal to the direction of travel of the wave. But this is a mode – the field pattern of the propagating wave – that is somehow ideal, as it exists in […]
Acenes are the class of organic compounds made up of linearly fused benzene rings. The best known of acenes is the compound with three rings, anthracene. The larger representatives, like pentacene (the one with five rings) have potential interest in optoelectronic applications and are actively researched in chemistry and electrical engineering. Starphenes are 2D polyaromatic […]
Isolated atomic planes, two-dimensional (2D) materials, like graphene can be reassembled into designer heterostructures made layer by layer in a precisely chosen sequence. Such heterostructures are often referred to as ‘van der Waals’ and the simpler one is composed of just two layers (bilayer). In 2018, Pablo Jarillo-Herrero, an experimentalist at MIT, found that at […]