2021 New's Items

Spin-orbit (SO) coupling combined with space inversion symmetry breaking is at the origin of the lifting of the spin degeneracy in the band structure of many materials. The momentum-dependent energy splitting and the degree of spin polarization are indicative of the strength and symmetry of the SO interaction, and enter in the figure of merit of essentially all conceptual designs aiming to control the electron spin degree of freedom in solids. Here we briefly review the role played by spin-and-angle–resolved photoemission (spin ARPES or SARPES) in revealing the spin polarization...

The rate of spontaneous emission from an optical emitter can be greatly enhanced using a metallic optical antenna at the penalty of efficiency. In this paper we propose a metal-dielectric antenna that eliminates the tradeoff between spontaneous emission enhancement and radiative efficiency by using nanoscopic dielectric structures at the antenna tips. This tradeoff occurs due to Ohmic loss and is further exacerbated by electron surface collisions. We find that our metal-dielectric antenna can enhance spontaneous emission by a factor 5 × 105 with efficiency...

Liquid organic hydrogen carriers such as alcohols and polyols are a high-capacity means of transporting and reversibly storing hydrogen that demands effective catalysts to drive the (de)hydrogenation reactions under mild conditions. We employed a combined theory/experiment approach to develop MOF-74 catalysts for alcohol dehydrogenation and examine the performance of the open metal sites (OMS), which have properties analogous to the active sites in high-performance single-site catalysts and homogeneous catalysts. Methanol dehydrogenation was used as a model reaction system for...