Category Archives: Materials
How to improve the transport efficiency of excitons by many orders of magnitude
Usually, the concept of exciton is linked to that of nonmetallic crystal: an electron-hole pair in a crystal that is bound in a manner analogous to the electron and proton of a hydrogen atom. It behaves like an atomic excitation […]
Porphyrin complexes for high efficiency solar cells
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 […]
Recent advances in lithium-ion rechargeable batteries
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 […]
The van der Waals contribution to the mystery of the gas-metal interaction
We are all familiar with the equation of ideal gases: PV = nRT. To deduce this equation, an ideal model of the gas is considered. In this model, gases are composed of particles so tiny compared to the volume […]
Identifying the bottlenecks for improving quantum-dot based devices
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 […]
Mesoscopic Josephson junctions with lead electrodes
When two superconducting materials are separated by a very thin (less than 10-8 m or 10 nanometers) layer of an insulating material at very low temperature some peculiar electrical effects can be detected called Josephson effects.
If normal conducting […]
Real-time tracking of mesoscale surface oxidation changes
We are all familiar with rust. Rust is an iron oxide, usually red, formed by the reaction of iron and oxygen in the presence of water or air moisture, and it is a clear sign of metal corrosion by oxidation. […]
B-graphene: from large scale to local environment
The current in a semiconductor consists of two parts: the negatively charged electrons in the conduction band and the positively charged holes in the valence band. Although the number of electrons in the conduction band is equal to the number […]
Heat creates spin
When quantum computing comes, it very likely will rely for the fast storage and processing of information on spintronics. Spintronics (from spin transport electronics) is a branch of technology that specifically makes use of quantum-mechanical spin, and especially of the […]
Controlling dispersion forces with light
It is likely that you have read somewhere that gravity is much weaker than the electromagnetic interaction. And it is true: for the electron and the proton gravity is 39 orders of magnitude weaker. Still what governs the movement of […]