One feature of supramolecular chemistry is that of self-assembly, in which the structure forms spontaneously as a consequence of the nature of the molecules. Weak non-covalent bonds are fundamental for designing self-assembled organic structures with potentially high responsiveness to mechanical, light, and thermal stimuli. The contributions of multiple weak interactions control the ability of the […]
Mermin–Wagner The demand for computational power is increasing exponentially, following the amount of data generated across different devices, applications and cloud platforms. To keep up with this trend, smaller and increasingly energy-efficient devices must be developed, which require the study of compounds not yet explored in data-storage technologies. The discovery of magnetically stable 2D van […]
A catalyst is a substance that increases the rate of a chemical reaction without itself undergoing any permanent chemical change. The study of enzymes has provided us many of the prototypical concepts of catalysis, including the idea that a catalyst lowers the barrier to reaction and thereby accelerates the approach to chemical equilibrium, without altering […]
An exciton can be described as an electron-hole pair in a crystal that is bound in a manner analogous to the electron and proton in a hydrogen atom. The exciton behaves like an atomic excitation that passes from one atom to another. In most cases, excitons are induced by an electromagnetic wave, a photon. Interestingly […]
Yttrium barium copper oxide (YBCO) is a family of crystalline chemical compounds that display high-temperature superconductivity; it includes the first material ever discovered to become superconducting above the boiling point of liquid nitrogen (77 K) at about 93 K. This family is known as cuprates as it can be viewed as containing anionic copper complexes […]
Graphene is a key two-dimensional material that continues to reveal intriguing properties when stacked into just a few layers. But the interesting point is that it is not just a question of a layer sitting on another layer randomly, but how exactly their atoms are positioned in relation to each other. In this vein, for […]
Twisted bilayer graphene (TBG) has taken the spotlight in the condensed matter community since the discovery of correlated phases. Now, a team of researchers studies heterostructures of TBG and hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) using an atomistic tight-binding model together with semi-classical molecular dynamics to consider relaxation effects. Isolated atomic planes, two-dimensional (2D) materials, like graphene […]
Transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) are layered compounds which can be thinned down to the single-layer limit. While mechanical exfoliation generates atomically thin TMD flakes possessing an area of a few square microns, chemical and physical methods provide high-quality monolayers on large-area substrates, which are suitable for actual technological applications. TMDs are a class of van […]
Transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) are layered compounds which can be thinned down to the single-layer limit. While mechanical exfoliation generates atomically thin TMD flakes possessing an area of a few square microns, chemical and physical methods provide high-quality monolayers on large-area substrates, which are suitable for actual technological applications. TMDs are a class of van […]
An exciton can be described as an electron-hole pair in a crystal that is bound in a manner analogous to the electron and proton in a hydrogen atom. Thus, the exciton behaves like an atomic excitation that passes from one atom to another. Exciton energy states involve a band with a particular dispersion law that […]