Category archives: Chemistry

Mimicking Nature’s light-harvesting efficiency: the case of sulphur-bridged terthiophene dimers

Mimicking Nature’s light-harvesting efficiency: the case of sulphur-bridged terthiophene dimers

ChemistryCondensed matterEnergyMaterials

By DIPC

In nature, light harvesting organisms make extensive use of energy and electron transfer between adjacent molecules. Thus, in the photosynthetic cell of an algae, bacterium, or plant, there are light-sensitive molecules called chromophores, which contain a π-conjugated system (a system with alternate single and double bonds), arranged in an antenna-shaped structure named a photocomplex. When […]

Effects of defects and water on perovskite solar cells

Effects of defects and water on perovskite solar cells

ChemistryCondensed matterEnergyMaterialsPhysics

By DIPC

The German mineralogist Gustav Rose (1798 – 1873) made important contributions in the fields of petrology and crystallography. He was the first to use a reflective goniometer in Germany and developed a particular interest in the relationship between the crystalline form and the physical properties of minerals. As a consequence, he contributed significantly to the […]

Electronic friction is fundamental to understand surface chemistry dynamics

Electronic friction is fundamental to understand surface chemistry dynamics

ChemistryCondensed matterMaterialsPhysics

By DIPC

Anyone who has studied, even superficially, some thermodynamics has encountered the word adiabatic very early. This is because adiabatic processes are extremely useful to understand the basics of the field. An adiabatic process is any process that occurs without heat (or matter) entering or leaving a system. In general, an adiabatic change involves a fall […]

Porphyrin complexes for high efficiency solar cells

Porphyrin complexes for high efficiency solar cells

ChemistryCondensed matterEnergyMaterials

By DIPC

As the search for renewable energy sources has intensified, the discovery of efficient and cheap technologies for exploiting the energy from the sunlight has emerged as a key challenge. Higher efficiency plays an increasingly important role in making competitive solar cell designs as the price of silicon continues to drop. At present, the actual silicon […]

Recent advances in lithium-ion rechargeable batteries

Recent advances in lithium-ion rechargeable batteries

ChemistryCondensed matterEnergyMaterials

By Francisco R. Villatoro

Lithium-ion batteries are widely used in portable electronic devices and electric vehicles since their introduction by Sony in 1991. Safety is an important concern since about two billion cells are produced every year but with a one-in-200,000 failure rate. Excessive temperature variations and high temperatures over the melting point of the metallic lithium can cause […]

Identifying the bottlenecks for improving quantum-dot based devices

Identifying the bottlenecks for improving quantum-dot based devices

ChemistryCondensed matterMaterialsPhysicsQuantum physics

By DIPC

Minimizing losses in any kind of electronic device is always important, but it is paramount in nanoelectronics. Still, most of the phenomena that lead to inefficiencies in the operation of these nanodevices are poorly understood. Consider the case of quantum dots. A quantum dot is a nanometric crystalline structure of semiconductor materials. In a quantum […]

Actinoid oxides, where quantum methods are key to understanding the chemistry

Actinoid oxides, where quantum methods are key to understanding the chemistry

ChemistryCondensed matter

By DIPC

In the standard representation of the periodic table, we find below two separated rows of elements. Their chemistry and electronic configuration belong to a group three element, so what these two separated rows really mean is that in this representation of the table they are all located on top lanthanum and actinium, three-dimensionally building a […]