Diodes are everywhere these days as they are key elements for electronics, optics, and detection. A diode is an electronic device with two electrodes. In the obsolescent thermionic diode a heated cathode emits electrons, which flow across the intervening vacuum to the anode when a positive potential is applied to it. The device permits flow […]
Terahertz (THz) radiation is all around us. For example, this page emits blackbody radiation mainly in the THz region (broadly from 0.3 THz to 30 THz). Because terahertz radiation begins at a wavelength of around one millimeter and proceeds into shorter wavelengths, it is sometimes known as the submillimeter band, and its radiation as submillimeter […]
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 […]
“ Eat all your food, it can’t be wasted”. How many times have you heard that phrase from your parents? We did not know it, but they were right. Nowadays, a third of the food we generate is wasted. This generates both economic losses (~ $940 billion USD per year) and environmental problems (4.4 Gt […]
Quantum computing is the future. Or the present, if you believe that some real quantum computers are commercially available already. Because it is hard to admit that any computer system whose design and theoretical basis depend on quantum effects for their operation may be on the market today, even though IBM says otherwise. The trick […]
“What would happen if we could arrange the atoms one by one the way we want them?” Richard Feynman Fabrication of matter atom by atom remains a long-standing dream and ultimate goal of nanotechnology, following the famous challenge by Feynman 58 years ago. For 30 years, the atom-by-atom fabrication remained the province of visionary thinking […]
Condensed matter • Materials • Nanotechnology • Physics • Quantum physics • Theoretical physics
Chemists have a range of different spectroscopic techniques to study organic molecules. All of these techniques are based on spectra generated by a range of electronic transitions and vibrations, key excitations in matter, the study of which provides information about characteristics of materials and, therefore, allow their identification. In this context, one of those spectroscopic […]
Condensed matter • Materials • Quantum physics • Theoretical physics
The wave nature of light expresses itself in the propagation all over space, showing an intrinsic limitation to be localized beyond the so-called diffraction limit which is of the order of half the wavelength of the photons propagating. However when interacting with matter, light often gets reflected, diffracted, scattered or absorbed depending on the interactions […]
Major technological revolutions have occurred when the humankind has been able to harness natural resources, such as fire, electricity or nuclear energy. We are now in the verge of the so called second quantum revolution, that aims to harness two of the weirdest natural resources, coherence and entanglement. This is a tall order that calls […]
Interfacial electron transfer constitutes the key step in the conversion of solar energy into electricity and fuels. Required for fast and efficient charge separation, strong donor−acceptor interaction is typically achieved through covalent chemical bonding…or not. Experiences with donor−acceptor molecular diads and triads, conjugated polymers, and DNA, leads to the expectation that a covalent bonding is […]