Related papers: Incipient Metals: Functional Materials with a Uniq…

Ge2Sb2Te5 and related phase change materials are highly unusual in that they can be readily transformed between amorphous and crystalline states using very fast melt, quench, anneal cycles, although the resulting states are extremely long…

The chemical bond is one of the most powerful, yet controversial concepts in chemistry, explaining property trends in solids. Recently, a novel type of chemical bonding has been identified in several higher chalcogenides, characterized by a…

The way atoms attach to each other defines the function(s), e.g., mechanical, optical, electronic, of a given material. The nature of the chemical bond is, therefore, one of the most fundamental issues in materials. Both ionic interactions,…

Jamming is a fundamental transition that governs the mechanical behavior of particulate media, including sand, foam and dense suspensions but also biological tissues: Upon compression, particulate media can change from freely flowing to a…

Covalent molecules are characterized by directed bonds, which provide stability-of-form to the molecules relative atomic positions. In contrast, bulk metals are characterized by delocalized bonds, where a large number of resonance…

We first argue that the covalent bond and the various closed-shell interactions can be thought of as symmetry broken versions of one and the same interaction, viz., the multi-center bond. We use specially chosen molecular units to show that…

Topological phases are characterised by a topological invariant that remains unchanged by deformations in the Hamiltonian. Materials exhibiting topological phases include topological insulators, superconductors exhibiting strong spin-orbit…

Bonding between polymeric interfaces is encountered widely in several industrial applications. Many of these bonding processes rely on time-consuming and temperature-dependent classical mechanism of polymer interdiffusion via reptation in a…

Single particle states in a chain with quasiperiodic potential show a metal-insulator transition upon the change of the potential strength. We consider two particles with local interaction in the single particle insulating regime. The two…

Introducing foreign ions, atoms, or molecules into emerging functional materials is crucial for manipulating material physical properties and innovating device applications. The intercalation of emerging new materials can induce multiple…

It is known that covalently bonded materials undergo nonthermal structure transformations upon ultrafast excitation of an electronic system, whereas metals exhibit phonon hardening. Here we study how ionic bonds react to electronic…

Chalcogenide phase-change materials (PCMs) are regarded as the leading candidate for storage-class non-volatile memory and neuro-inspired computing. Recently, using the $TiTe_2$/$Sb_2Te_3$ material combination, a new framework -…

We introduce "bond-counting" potentials, which provide an elementary description of covalent bonding. These simplistic potentials are intended for studies of the mechanisms behind a variety of phase transitions in elemental melts, including…

Plasmons are fundamental excitations of metals which can be described in terms of electron dynamics, or in terms of the electromagnetic fields associated with them. In this work we develop a quantum description of plasmons in a double layer…

Strongly correlated materials are profoundly affected by the repulsive electron-electron interaction. This stands in contrast to many commonly used materials such as silicon and aluminum, whose properties are comparatively unaffected by the…

In the last decade phase change materials (PCM) research has switched from practical application in optical data storage toward electrical phase change random access memory technologies (PCRAM). As these devices are commercialised, we…

Entanglement of bosonic modes of material oscillators is studied in the context of two bilinearly coupled, nonlinear oscillators. These oscillators are realizable in the vibrational-cum-bending motions of C-H bonds in dihalomethanes. The…

In the past two decades, geometric phases have provided a powerful new way of looking at quantum mechanical systems, manifesting themselves in subtle but observable ways. Here, we use them to define a versatile function ("distribution of…

Chemical bonding governs how atoms interact to form compounds, thereby determining their physicochemical properties. Despite being an elusive concept, chemical bonding has led to the development of models and tools to explain and predict…

Magnetism in transition metal compounds is usually considered starting from a description of isolated ions, as exact as possible, and treating their (exchange) interaction at a later stage. We show that this standard approach may break down…