Category archives: Materials

How to improve the transport efficiency of excitons by many orders of magnitude

How to improve the transport efficiency of excitons by many orders of magnitude

Condensed matterMaterialsPhysics

By DIPC

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 (hence the name) that passes from atom to another and may be long-lived. Exciton behaviour […]

Porphyrin complexes for high efficiency solar cells

Porphyrin complexes for high efficiency solar cells

ChemistryCondensed matterEnergyMaterials

By DIPC

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 solar cell designs as the price of silicon continues to drop. At present, the actual silicon […]

Recent advances in lithium-ion rechargeable batteries

Recent advances in lithium-ion rechargeable batteries

ChemistryCondensed matterEnergyMaterials

By Francisco R. Villatoro

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 temperature variations and high temperatures over the melting point of the metallic lithium can cause […]

Identifying the bottlenecks for improving quantum-dot based devices

Identifying the bottlenecks for improving quantum-dot based devices

ChemistryCondensed matterMaterialsPhysicsQuantum physics

By DIPC

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 dots. A quantum dot is a nanometric crystalline structure of semiconductor materials. In a quantum […]

Heat creates spin

Heat creates spin

Computer scienceCondensed matterMaterialsPhysicsQuantum physics

By DIPC

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 transport of that spin, in electronic devices. Spin is the part of the total angular […]