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 […]
An exciton can be described as an electron-hole pair in a crystal that is bound in a manner analogous to the electron and proton in a hydrogen atom. The exciton behaves like an atomic excitation that passes from one atom to another. In most cases, excitons are induced by an electromagnetic wave, a photon. Interestingly […]
Yttrium barium copper oxide (YBCO) is a family of crystalline chemical compounds that display high-temperature superconductivity; it includes the first material ever discovered to become superconducting above the boiling point of liquid nitrogen (77 K) at about 93 K. This family is known as cuprates as it can be viewed as containing anionic copper complexes […]
One-dimensional metal−organic chains often possess a complex magnetic structure, susceptible to modification by alteration of their chemical composition. The possibility to tune their magnetic properties provides an interesting playground to explore quasi-particle interactions in low-dimensional systems. These systems have potential applications in the fabrication of nanodevices for spin sensing, spintronics, quantum computing based on the […]