A key feature that makes natural materials highly sustainable and recyclable is their modularity. Biodegradable materials are such because biological organisms can digest and break their constituting chemicals into simpler building blocks. Often such simpler building blocks are then reused for energy or structural purposes. In other words, nature needs materials that can be broken […]
The scattering of conduction electrons in metals due to impurities with magnetic moments is known as the Kondo effect, after Jun Kondo, who analysed the phenomenon in 1964. This scattering increases the electrical resistance and has as a consequence that, in contrast to ordinary metals, the resistance reaches a minimum as the temperature is lowered […]
The migration of carbon atoms on the surface of the nanomaterial graphene was recently measured for the first time. Although the atoms move too swiftly to be directly observed with an electron microscope, their effect on the stability of the material can now be determined indirectly while the material is heated on a microscopic hot […]
Transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) are layered compounds which can be thinned down to the single-layer limit. While mechanical exfoliation generates atomically thin TMD flakes possessing an area of a few square microns, chemical and physical methods provide high-quality monolayers on large-area substrates, which are suitable for actual technological applications. TMDs are a class of van […]
Imagine a conductor or a semiconductor through which a current is flowing. Then we apply a strong transverse magnetic field. As a result, we can measure a potential difference at right angles to both the current and the field caused by the deflection of charge carriers by the field. This effect was described by Edwin […]
Chemistry • DIPC Computational and Theoretical Chemistry • Materials
If we are asked what a metal is, most likely we would think almost automatically in those elements that we see as lustrous solids, good conductors of heat and electricity, that tend to form positive ions, and with a particular chemical bond that keep metal atoms in place, the metallic bond. And all of this […]
Some metals, alloys and transition-element salts exhibit a form of magnetism called antiferromagnetism. This occurs below a certain temperature, named after Louis Néel, when an ordered array of atomic magnetic moments spontaneously forms in which alternate moments have opposite directions. There is therefore no net resultant magnetic moment in the absence of an applied field […]
Human activities impact significantly on the environment we live. The human society has been experiencing extreme weather conditions frequently that indicate a systematic climate shift. Almost every place in the world has set records of extreme temperatures. This trend of extreme weather has been warned by scientists to be possibly a result of excessive human […]
Chemistry • DIPC Computational and Theoretical Chemistry • Materials
Nanothreads are one-dimensional nanomaterials composed of a primarily sp 3 hydrocarbon backbone, typically formed through the compression of small molecules to high pressures. In 2015, it was found that the slow room-temperature compression of benzene produced crystalline , one-dimensional polymers composed of diamond-like bonds. These diamondoid materials that border nanotubes and polymers are predicted to […]
Twistology could be the study of unexpected changes or developments in stories or situations, from coups d’état to the fatherhood of Darth Vader. In condensed matter physics there is something similar, although the preferred name is twistronics (from twist and electronics). It is understood as the study of how the angle (the twist) between layers […]