Category Archives: Condensed matter
The 7 states of condensed matter at room temperature
In ‘Chemistry Essentials for Dummies‘, John T. Moore writes:
Matter is anything that has mass and occupies space. It can exist in one of three classic states: solid, liquid, and gas. When a substance goes from one […]
What bounds a molecular solid together?
We usually think of crystals as composed of different atoms in certain proportions, this proportion being the molecular fórmula that represents the crystal. However, it is not surprising that any molecule could be the basis of a crystal structure, whether […]
How to synthesize a nanoporous graphene that is both transistor and molecular sieve
Graphene is a two-dimensional allotrope of carbon made of hexagons. It is a zero-gap semimetal with a tiny overlap between valence and conductance bands. Since the isolation of graphene in 2004, considerable interest has been paid to exploring its […]
Ordinary experience vs. quantum experience
We usually think of nature as existing completely independently of us and possessing a definite reality and behaviour even when we are not observing it. For instance, you assume that the world outside of the place where you are now […]
The size of atoms, uncertainty and relativity
You may have read somewhere that atoms are actually made up mostly of empty space. The usual description goes more or less as follows. At the centre of each atom there is a very tiny nucleus, which carries all of […]
The enigmatic tetrahalodiboranes
Among the group 13 elements, boron alone forms halides of the type X2B-BX2 (X=F, Cl, Br, I), known as tetrahalodiboranes. Over the past five years, the filing of patents involving tetrahalodiboranes has outpaced their appearance in journal […]
Spin control using chemical design
During the last decades, the electronics industry has been very successful in pushing forward the advancement of electronic building blocks, but the limit of silicon-based electronic devices especially in terms of miniaturization are almost reached. There are many ideas how […]
Non-adiabatic effects in gas-surface interactions
Adsorption commonly is understood as the reversible binding of molecules and atoms from the gaseous or liquid phase on surfaces, mostly of highly porous adsorbent media. In chemisorption a single layer of molecules, atoms or ions is attached to the […]
Mechanochemistry of nanographenes
Modern organic industrial chemistry started when William Henry Perkin serendipitously synthesized mauveine in 1856 while he was attempting the total synthesis of quinine. Since then, thousands of new organic products have been created in the laboratory for industrial purposes. Among […]
Submolecular resolution using inelastic electron tunnelling spectroscopy at 5 K
What only a decades ago seemed impossible for chemists, determining the chemical structure of molecules directly from experimental images, is now routinely done. Not only that, the information about bond order, intermediates, and products of on-surface chemical reactions or charge […]