2020 New's Items

Small, out-of-equilibrium, and quantum systems defy simple thermodynamic expressions. Such systems are exemplified by molecular switches, which exchange heat with a bath. These molecules can photoisomerize, or change conformation, or switch, on absorbing light. The photoisomerization probability depends on kinetic details that couple the molecule's energetics to its dissipation. Therefore, a simple, general, thermodynamic-style bound on the photoisomerization probability seems out of reach. We derive such a bound using a resource theory. The resource-theory framework is a set of...

Because of the toxicity of lead, searching for a lead-free halide perovskite semiconducting material with comparable optical and electronic properties is of great interest. Rare-earth-based halide perovskite represents a promising class of materials for this purpose. In this work, we demonstrate the solution-phase synthesis of single-crystalline CsEuCl3 nanocrystals with a uniform size distribution centered around 15 nm. The CsEuCl3 nanocrystals have photoluminescence emission centered at 435 nm, with a full width at half-maximum of...

Thermoelectric devices possess enormous potential to reshape the global energy landscape by converting waste heat into electricity, yet their commercial implementation has been limited by their high cost to output power ratio. No single “champion” thermoelectric material exists due to a broad range of material-dependent thermal and electrical property optimization challenges. While the advent of nanostructuring provided a general design paradigm for reducing material thermal conductivities, there exists no analogous strategy for homogeneous, precise doping of materials. Here, we...

The synthesis of new materials with novel or useful properties is one of the most important drivers in the fields of condensed matter physics and materials science. Discoveries of this kind are especially significant when they point to promising future basic research and applications. van der Waals bonded materials comprised of lower-dimensional building blocks have been shown to exhibit emergent properties when isolated in an atomically thin form [1–8]. Here, we report the discovery of a transition metal chalcogenide in a heretofore unknown segmented linear chain form, where basic...