Author: María A. Izquierdo-Morelos is a Ph.D. student (ITN-EJD-TCCM) at University of Groningen Over the past several decades researchers have thought how materials and device architectures can efficiently convert solar radiation into electrical power through the photovoltaic effect. Those efforts have led to different methods and processes to produce green energy. In this context, organic […]
Author: Stefano Battaglia is a Ph.D. student (ITN-EJD-TCCM) at Université de Toulouse III Since the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded in 2010 to Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov for groundbreaking discoveries on the two-dimensional material graphene, the research in low-dimensional carbon nanostructures has seen an incredible increase of interest. Among the different types of […]
Among the astonishing properties of graphene, a high mobility of the charge carriers has placed this material into the focus of intensive research efforts, aimed at developing high-speed graphene-based electronic devices. The first device of this family, a graphene field-effect transistor (GFET), still remains a promising candidate for applications in flexible electronic circuits. An essential […]
Author: Ewa N. Szlapa is a is a Ph.D. student (ITN-EJD-TCCM) at Catholic University of Leuven At the beginning of the development of chemistry as a science there was alchemy, which was considered to be a magicians’ business. An alchemist put some ingredients into the glass vessel and after some time the mixture inside could […]
Author: Meilani Wibowo obtained her master’s degree at the University of Valencia, Spain. Currently she is a Ph.D. student (ITN-EJC TCCM) at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands, where she works on the improvement of organic photovoltaic devices. Solar energy as one of the alternative and sustainable energy sources has a potential to replace fossil […]
This year the Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to Jean-Pierre Sauvage, Fraser Stoddart and Ben Feringa “for the design and synthesis of molecular machines” . These devices, often described as the tiniest “Lego” , a re indeed so small that is difficult to grasp their size used as we are to the macroscopic […]
Author: Tommaso Francese is a Ph.D. student (ITN-EJD-TCCM) at Universitat de Barcelona Every year the amount of data produced is of the order of magnitude of the Avogadro’s constant, thus 6.028×10 23 . Let’s say that it is more or less the quantity of hydrogen atoms contained in 1 gram. This trend is supposed to […]
A chemical compound or molecule consisting of two identical simpler molecules is a dimer. If one of the simpler molecules is excited while the other is in its ground, non-excited, state we talk about excimers. They are excited dimers which are non-bonding in the ground state. Thus, excimers can be considered evanescent quasi-particles that typically […]
Chemistry • Condensed matter • Materials • Physics • Quantum physics
Graphene is a two-dimensional allotrope of carbon made of hexagons. In February 2015, penta-graphene, only made of pentagons, was theoretically proposed as another two-dimensional allotrope of carbon . Apparently, it is dynamically, thermally, and mechanically stable, exhibiting a large band gap (graphene is gapless). However, an exhaustive experimental search has been inconclusive, resulting in doubts […]
Everybody knows the force that is required to activate a light switch on a wall – a finger is enough. But how much force do you need to apply if the device was dramatically reduced to the “nanoscale world”, that is, how much force do you need to operate a “single-molecule switch”? This fundamental question […]