Category archives: Chemistry

Organic-based materials have gained rising interest as active components in electronics, energy conversion and catalytic systems. However, the discrete nature of the molecular constituents of these systems implies a reduced electron conductance, lowering the device efficiency. In order to increase the electron delocalization through an improved structural order, which favors orbital overlap and consequently the […]

Auranofin is a gold (Au) salt classified by the World Health Organization as an antirheumatic agent. It was approved for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis in 1985, but is no longer a first-line treatment due to its adverse effects on a long-term basis. But the drug is important in another way. The discovery that auranofin […]

Carbon monoxide (CO) oxidation (2CO + O2 → CO2) on platinum (Pt) group metal surfaces is the model heterogeneous gas/surface catalytic reaction. Pt itself is of the upmost importance as a catalyst for car exhaust cleaning or for the water gas shift reaction, whereas Pt crystal surfaces are model systems for investigating the catalytic CO […]

The magnitude of many of the exotic phenomena predicted for topological semimetals is directly proportional to something called the Chern number. Given the importance of the Chern number magnitude for these phenomena, it is just natural to wonder whether there is an upper limit for it and whether there are real materials in which this […]

“Eat all your food, it can’t be wasted”. How many times have you heard that phrase from your parents? We did not know it, but they were right. Nowadays, a third of the food we generate is wasted. This generates both economic losses (~ $940 billion USD per year) and environmental problems (4.4 Gt of […]

A new fluorescent bicolour indicator, an organic molecule, could help detect the daughter atom of a neutrinoless double beta decay. If this is achieved, there would be an explanation to the matter-anti matter asymmetry in the universe. Experiments performed in 1909 by Geiger and Marsden, also called Rutherford gold foil experiment because Rutherford was their […]

When we consider the variety of possible wonder applications of plasmonic nanoparticles we usually forget a key aspect: how these laboratory results can be transformed into something really usable in everyday life. For that to occur some not-that-simple problems must be resolved first. For example, plasmonic nanoparticles exhibit excellent light-harvesting properties in the visible spectral […]

One of the most important scientific objectives in recent years is to find solutions to the problem of climate change and environmental pollution. Unfortunately, this issue is not only related to the amount of CO2 that is released into the atmosphere from fossil fuels. The chemical industry, in the complex processes it carries out to […]

One of the greatest inventions of the 20th century, if not the greatest, was the transistor. It revolutionized the electronics industry and changed the way people around the world lived, learned, worked, and played. Its invention marked the beginning of solid state electronics which quickly reduced the size and power requirements of existing electronic tube […]

Usually, optical activity is understood as the ability some substances have to change the handedness of polarized light when it goes through them. Molecules that show optical activity have no plane of symmetry. The commonest case of this is in organic compounds in which a carbon atom is linked to four different groups. An atom […]