Category Archives: Condensed matter
Riboflavin as a bioorthogonal photocatalyst
The combination of catalysis and bioorthogonality promises have an impact on drug discovery and bioimaging. Bioorthogonality, a term coined by Carolyn R. Bertozzi in 2003, refers to any chemical reaction that can occur inside of living systems without interfering with […]
Defeating spin decoherence
Major technological revolutions have occurred when the humankind has been able to harness natural resources, such as fire, electricity or nuclear energy. We are now in the verge of the so called second quantum revolution, that aims to harness two […]
Strong donor-acceptor coupling does not require covalent bonding
Interfacial electron transfer constitutes the key step in the conversion of solar energy into electricity and fuels. Required for fast and efficient charge separation, strong donor−acceptor interaction is typically achieved through covalent chemical bonding…or not.
Experiences with donor−acceptor molecular diads […]
Topological Quantum Chemistry, the band theory of solids is now complete
Extended and refined by Bloch and others during the 1930s, Bloch’s theory, known as the band theory of solids, accounts very well for the conducting behaviour of materials. When atoms are joined together into a crystal, each of the individual […]
Materials for raising the temperature of the quantized anomalous Hall and magnetoelectric effects
Topological insulators are electronic materials that have a bulk band gap like an ordinary insulator but have conducting states on their edge or surface. The conducting surface is not what makes topological insulators unique, but the fact that it is […]
Recovering native chemical information from surface-enhanced Raman scattering
For centuries, metals were employed in optical applications only as mirrors and gratings. New vistas opened up in the late 1970s and early 1980s with the discovery of surface-enhanced Raman scattering and the use of surface plasmon (collective electronic oscillations […]
Geological phenomena implying dissolved species bring new insights on fundamental thermophysics
Over geologic time scales, seawater transforms the basalt of the ocean floor by chemical attack. At the end of this alteration process, the basalt turns partly into clays and partly into dissolved salts in sea water. Lithium, a chemical element […]
Enantioselective polymerization of a biodegradable polymer using a substituted aminoacid as a catalyst
The idea that certain natural products such as rubber are composed of giant molecules, or polymers, consisting of many repeating units linked by covalent bonds arose largely from the work of the German chemist Hermann Staudinger (1881–1965) in the early […]
The tautomerization of porphycene on Cu(111) in simple physical terms
There are compounds, called isomers, that have the same molecular formulae but different molecular structures or different arrangements of atoms in space. In the so-called cis-trans isomerism, isomers have different positions of groups or specific atoms with respect to a […]
A link between straintronics and valleytronics in graphene
So-called “valleytronics” is a new type of electronics that could lead to faster and more efficient computer logic systems and data storage chips in next-generation devices. Valley electrons are so named because they carry a valley “degree of freedom.” This […]