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Heterostructures made by stacking different materials on top of each other are expected to exhibit unusual properties and new phenomena. Interface of the heterostructures plays a vital role in determining their properties. Here, we report…
Hypothesis: Slippery Omniphobic Covalently Attached Liquids (SOCAL) have been proposed for making omnirepellent thin films of self-assembled dimethylsiloxane polymer brushes grafted from silica surfaces. Smooth and flat at very small scale,…
We propose a four-component molecular model of bitumen. The model includes realistic chemical constituents and introduces a coarse-graining level that suppresses the highest frequency modes. Molecular dynamics simulations of the model are…
We study the onset of friction for rough contacting blocks whose interface is coated with a thin lubrication layer. High speed measurements of the real contact area and stress fields near the interface reveal that propagating shear cracks…
Reducing the coefficient of boundary friction on steel surfaces is one of key technologies to improve the efficiency of machines such as automotive engines. It has been shown that the boundary friction on nanostructured steel surfaces in…
We address the energetic stability of the graphene/SiC(0001) interface and the associated binding mechanism by studying a series of low-strain commensurate interface structures within a density functional scheme. Among the structures with…
The intercalation of an oxide barrier between graphene and its metallic substrate for chem- ical vapor deposition is a contamination-free alternative to the transfer of graphene to dielectric supports, usually needed for the realization of…
We perform molecular dynamics simulations to understand the translational and rotational diffusion of Janus nanoparticles at the interface between two immiscible fluids. Considering spherical particles with different affinity to fluid…
Diamond and diamond-like carbon (DLC) are used as coating materials for numerous applications, ranging from biomedicine to tribology. Recently, it has been shown that the hydrophilicity of the carbon films can be enhanced by silicon doping,…
Atomically thin materials such as graphene are uniquely responsive to charge transfer from adjacent materials, making them ideal charge transport layers in phototransistor devices. Effective implementation of organic semiconductors as a…
We present the results of large scale molecular dynamics simulations aimed at understanding the origins of high friction coefficients in pure metals, and their concomitant reduction in alloys and composites. We utilize a series of targeted…
There is accumulating evidence for the presence of complex molecules, including carbon-bearing and organic molecules, in the interstellar medium. Much of this evidence comes to us from studies of chemical composition, photo- and…
Man-made artificial graphene has attracted significant attention in the past few years due to the possibilities to construct designer Dirac fermions with unexpected topological properties and applications in nanoelectronics. Here we use a…
Graphene - a monolayer of carbon atoms densely packed into a hexagonal lattice - has one of the strongest possible atomic bonds and can be viewed as a robust atomic-scale scaffold, to which other chemical species can be attached without…
Using molecular dynamics based on Langevin equations with a coordinate- and velocity-dependent damping coefficient, we study the frictional properties of a thin layer of "soft" lubricant (where the interaction within the lubricant is weaker…
We report macroscopic sheets of highly conductive bilayer graphene with exceptionally high hole concentrations of ~ $10^{15}$ $cm^{-2}$ and unprecedented sheet resistances of 20-25 {\Omega} per square over macroscopic scales, and obtained…
In spite of years of intense research, graphene continues to produce surprising results. Recently, it was experimentally observed that under certain conditions graphene can self-drive its tearing and peeling from substrates. This process…
Silicene, a sheet of silicon atoms in a honeycomb lattice, was proposed to be a new Dirac-type electron system similar as graphene. We performed scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy studies on the atomic and electronic properties…
Eyring theory provides a convenient approximation to the rate of a chemical reaction, as it uses only local information evaluated near extremal points of a given potential energy surface. However, in cases of pronounced anharmonicity and…
Particles diffusing near interfaces face anisotropic resistance to motion due to hydrodynamic interactions. While this has been extensively studied near \textit{hard} interfaces since the works of Lorentz and Brenner, our understanding of…