Search results: spintronics

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 […]

Few materials have drawn as much attention as graphene, it fascinating attributes such as one-atom thickness and relativistic electrons, and its technological properties like transparency, large mechanical strength, and ultra-high electron’s mobility, position it as one of the more promising materials in the present. Recently, simultaneous experimental and theoretical studies have confirmed that combining graphene […]

The properties of bismuth have long defied classification, placing it in a category of its own. Now, as if it was not enough, it turns out its electronic structure has higher-order topology. This has been shown by an international team with the participation of Maia G. Vergniory (DIPC, Ikerbasque, UPV/EHU) and coordinated by Titus Neupert […]

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 […]

Mimicking natural processes has been a recurrent strategy for the development of new technologies, from velcro to bullet trains. Thanks to the advances in scientific knowledge and technological tools achieved over the last decades, biologically inspired research has evolved from the macroscale to the nanoscale. This poses an interdisciplinary challenge, involving fields such as molecular […]

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 […]

Since the discovery that graphene, the two dimensional carbon allotrope, can be isolated and incorporated into electronic devices intense research efforts have been triggered. Driving forces behind the experimental and theoretical studies of graphene are, e.g., the exceptional electronic properties, in particular the high electron mobilities, the long spin coherence lengths and the possibility to […]

Imagine there exist a material in which an electron could be split into two quasiparticles. These two quasiparticles both would carry electric charge, move in opposite directions but could not move backwards. Furthermore these quasiparticles would be massless. And we can give them a fancy name, Weyl fermions. This seems to be at odds with […]

A topological insulator is a material in which there is order associated to topology, i.e., the surface can conduct electricity but the bulk of the material is an insulator. In these last years topological insulators have received the attention of a large area of the scientific community thanks to their exotic properties. They are promising […]