Category Archives: Materials
How you grow graphene on d-metals key to get spin-polarized electrons
Graphene is a material with outstanding electronic characteristics. Many of them arise from the cone-like dispersion of charge carriers near the Fermi level (at which the occupation probability of energy levels is 0.5), where electrons behave as relativistic Dirac fermions, […]
Contracting layered white graphene with a laser
The exotic properties of layered materials have become a major focus of scientific research. The most famous member of this group is graphene which serves as a building block for few layered graphene and graphite as well as for single- […]
Reaching atomic-scale resolution
One of the main features of a F1 car is aerodynamics. How the car minimizes the drag imposed by the fact it is moving through a fluid, air, and how it takes advantage of the forces this movement generates […]
Critical materials: The missing piece of the “green economy” puzzle
It is widely accepted that low carbon technologies will contribute to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, mostly those coming from carbon dioxide, and thus slow down the global warming. That’s why most of the largest economies in the world have […]
How to measure tiny temperature differences using a Josephson junction
At low temperatures, the resistivity of a metal (the inverse of its conductivity) is nearly constant. As the temperature of a material is lowered and as we approach absolute zero the resistivity should approach a constant value. Many metals, […]
Unveiling the origin of the record superconductivity
Achieving room temperature superconductivity is among the most pursued but elusive goals of scientists. A paper uploaded to the arXiv in December 2014 claims to have observed superconductivity as high as 190 K in hydrogen sulfide at high […]
How to induce a giant spin-orbit effect in graphene
There are some concepts in physics difficult to grasp. Mainly because we have no direct evidence of them and, in orther to get some understanding, we rely on analogies that are not strictly correct. One of these difficult concepts is […]
Darker than black quantum dots
A quantum dot is a nanometric crystalline structure of semiconductor materials. In a quatum dot electrons are confined in a region of space, thus creating a well defined structure of energy levels that depends very much on the size […]
Making truly multifunctional cellulose hybrid materials
When we think about the new materials of the future some names may come to mind: pure carbon, in the form of graphene or nanotubes or buckyballs or any other exotic allotrope; or some kind of oxide of these […]
The true colour of chlorophylls
Most leaves are various shades of green. This is due to the chlorophylls. The name chlorophyll comes from the Greek words chloros (green) and phyllon (leaf). There are six types of chlorophylls in plants. The two main chlorophylls are […]