Graphene is a two-dimensional allotrope of carbon made of hexagons. It is a zero-gap semimetal with a tiny overlap between valence and conductance bands. Since the isolation of graphene in 2004, considerable interest has been paid to exploring its applications in a variety of fields such as electronics, composites, sensors, catalysis and energy related systems […]
Two of the hot topics in science an technology nowadays are related to Computer Science. They are Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Quantum Computing (QC). AI is a really old field, as humanity has dreamed of having autonomous machines for decades. Quantum Computing is not as old as AI. It is considered that the idea of […]
How long does it take a photon to split a molecule? It is apparent that the answer must be well bellow a second, but, how much bellow? Attoscience focuses on these kind of phenomena that occur at the attosecond time-scale using pulses of electrons or photons. The prefix ‘atto-‘, symbol a, means 10-18, hence an […]
During the last decades, the electronics industry has been very successful in pushing forward the advancement of electronic building blocks, but the limit of silicon-based electronic devices especially in terms of miniaturization are almost reached. There are many ideas how to overcome this problem, for example, by adding functionality based on approaches originating from molecular […]
Modern organic industrial chemistry started when William Henry Perkin serendipitously synthesized mauveine in 1856 while he was attempting the total synthesis of quinine. Since then, thousands of new organic products have been created in the laboratory for industrial purposes. Among them, in 1913, an orange-red pigment was found, first known as Vat Orange 3 dye […]
What only a decades ago seemed impossible for chemists, determining the chemical structure of molecules directly from experimental images, is now routinely done. Not only that, the information about bond order, intermediates, and products of on-surface chemical reactions or charge distribution within molecules can also be quantified from those images. Two main techniques have made […]
During 2017 we have been witnessing the first tests of what might be called an integral hyperloop system at the Virgin Hyperloop One installations in Las Vegas, Nevada. Virgin Hyperloop One — named Hyperloop One before Virgin Group’s entry into its shareholder structure — leads, by its own merits, the pack of companies pursuing the […]
Chemistry • Condensed matter • Energy • Materials • Physics • Quantum physics
Following the need for new and renewable sources of energy worldwide, fuel cells using electrocatalysts can be thought of as viable options. Catalyst materials modify and increase the rate of chemical reactions without itself undergoing any permanent change. An electrocatalyst is a catalyst that participates in electrochemical reactions and that functions at electrode surfaces or […]
Our society will be facing a number of health-related challenges in the near future, partly as a consequence of our own practices. Perhaps the best known examples are the (severe) health issues linked to smoking (not just to smokers, but also their children via epigenetic changes) or the abnormally high intake of carbohydrates, with the […]
When I first started writing about condensed matter science I found some difficulties with a few purely physical concepts, being myself a chemist by education. One of those was ‘polariton’. After some years of reading solid state physics papers and writing about them on a weekly basis, now is a familiar term, but I still […]