Related papers: Controlling polarization at insulating surfaces: q…
Chiral materials display a property called optical activity, which is the capability to interact differentially with left and right circularly polarised light. This leads to the ability to manipulate the polarisation state of light, which…
Electrons on the surface of a strong topological insulator, such as Bi2Te3 or Bi1-xSnx, form a topologically protected helical liquid whose excitation spectrum contains an odd number of massless Dirac fermions. A theoretical survey and…
The polarization response of a material to a strain gradient, known as flexoelectricity, holds great promise for novel electromechanical applications. Despite considerable recent progress, however, the effect remains poorly understood. From…
In this work the polarizability of a subwavelength core-shell sphere is considered, where the shell exhibits a radially inhomogeneous permittivity profile. A mathematical treatment of the elec- trostatic polarizability is formulated in…
Polarization control is of fundamental importance for modern optical systems, and optical polarizers serve as critical components for enabling this functionality. Here, we experimentally demonstrate optical polarizers by integrating 2D…
Nanostructured silicon is a promising material for thermoelectric conversion, because the thermal conductivity in silicon nanostructures can be strongly reduced with respect to that of bulk materials. We present thermal conductivity…
Two-dimensional ferroelectrics are important quantum materials which have found novel application in nonvolatile memories, however, the effects of reversible polarization on chemical reactions and interaction with environments are rarely…
Fundamental understanding of macroscopic properties of polymer nanocomposites (PNCs) remains difficult due to the complex interplay of microscopic dynamics and structure, namely interfacial layer relaxations and three-dimensional…
Semiconductor nanowires have been shown to exhibit novel optoelectronic properties with respect to bulk specimens made of the same material. However, if a semiconductor alloy has a miscibility gap in its phase diagram, at equilibrium it…
We present a method for nanoscale thermal imaging of insulating thin films using atomic force microscopy (AFM), and we demonstrate its utility on VO$_2$. We sweep the applied voltage $V$ to a conducting AFM tip in contact mode and measure…
Recently, a logarithmic decrease of conductivity has been observed in topological insulators at low temperatures, implying a tendency of localization of surface electrons. Here, we report quantum transport experiments on the topological…
It was recently discovered that supercurrents flowing through thin superconducting nanowires can be quenched by a gate voltage. This gate control of supercurrents, known as the GCS effect, could enable superconducting transistor logic.…
The ion distribution of electrolytes near interfaces with dielectric contrast has important consequences for electrochemical processes and many other applications. To date, most studies of such systems have focused on geometrically simple…
Nanostructures, such a quantum dots or nanoparticles, made of three-dimensional topological insulators (3DTIs) have been recently attracting increasing interest, especially for their optical properties. In this paper we calculate the energy…
Premelting at the ice-polymer interfaces, in which a quasi-liquid layer (QLL) forms below the melting point, is strongly influenced by polymer surface chemistry; however, the molecular-scale mechanisms underlying these effects remain poorly…
Strong light-induced interactions between atoms are known to cause nonlinearities at a few-photon level which are crucial for applications in quantum information processing. Compared to free space, the scattering and the light-induced…
We study the influence of thermal Casimir-Polder forces on the near-surface trapping of cold polar molecules, with emphasis on LiH and YbF near an Au surface at room temperature. We show that for a molecule initially prepared in its…
In atomic vapor cells, atoms collide with the inner surface, causing their spin to randomize on the walls. This wall-depolarizing effect is diffusive, and it becomes more pronounced in smaller vapor cells under high temperatures. In this…
Controlling thermal energy transfer at the nanoscale has become critically important in many applications and thermal properties since it often limits device performance. In this work, we study the effects on thermal conductivity arising…
We develop a quantum theory of electron confinement in metal nanofilms. The theory is used to compute the nonlinear response of the film to a static or low-frequency external electric field and to investigate the role of boundary conditions…