Related papers: Tunable and Persistent Macroscopic Polarization in…
The polarization degree of freedom is an inherent feature of plane waves propagating in an isotropic homogeneous medium. The miniaturization of optical systems leads to the high localization of electromagnetic waves, but also to the loss of…
Polarizable particle systems, including charged colloids, polarizable ions, biomolecular assemblies, and soft nanomaterials, can exhibit contact electrostatic interactions that depart strongly from Coulomb behavior when dielectric mismatch…
The kinetics and thermodynamics of first order transitions is universally controlled by defects that act as nucleation sites and pinning centers. Here we demonstrate that defect-domain interactions during polarization reversal processes in…
Polar active particles constitute a wide class of synthetic colloids that are able to propel along a preferential direction, given by their polar axis. Here, we demonstrate a generic self-phoretic mechanism that leads to their spontaneous…
Bestowing CMOS-compatible binary oxides with additional functionalities is a powerful strategy toward the realization of oxide electronics. Ideal candidates are thin films which display a strong sensitivity to strain, chemical doping or…
We show a way to pattern the visible electroluminescence of solution-processed mesoporous ZnO layers. Our approach consists in locally changing the nanoscale morphology of the coated ZnO layers by patterning the underlying surface with thin…
We present an efficient moment-based perturbation scheme for evaluating polarizability tensors of small molecules at a fraction of the computational cost of conventional energy-based approaches. Rather than applying explicit electric…
Identifying the regions responsible for plastic flow in amorphous solids remains an open problem, since structural disorder seems to prevent the direct application of concepts such as dislocations, topological defects that successfully…
Quantum interference between multiple pathways in molecular photodissociation often results in angular momentum polarization of atomic products and this can give deep insight into fundamental physical processes. For dissociation of diatomic…
We present an approach to electronic polarization in molecular solids treated as a set of quantum systems interacting classically. Individual molecules are dealt with rigorously as quantum-mechanical systems subject to classical external…
Heterointerfaces are ubiquitous in modern devices, found in technologies ranging from microelectronics to structural components for energy applications. Many of these emerging technologies are found in applications such as satellites,…
In solid-state nanopores, achieving reliable control over pore aperture opening and closing (gating) remains a major challenge. Gating can be driven by the applied voltage involving electrically tunable chemical reactions, achieved by…
We report on the simultaneous observation of spontaneous symmetry breaking and long-range spatial coherence both in the strong and the weak-coupling regime in a semiconductor microcavity. Under pulsed excitation, the formation of a…
We describe ferroelectric thin films with circular electrodes and develop a thermodynamic theory that explains previously mysterious experiments. It is found to be especially useful for restricted geometries such as microstructures for…
Driven by novel approaches and computational techniques, second-principles atomic potentials are nowadays at the forefront of computational materials science, enabling large-scale simulations of material properties with…
Nanocrystalline materials are well known for their beneficial mechanical and physical properties. However, it is of utmost importance to stabilize the microstructure at elevated temperatures to broaden the window of application e.g. by…
Over the past decade, materials that combine broken inversion symmetry with metallic conductivity have gone from a thought experiment to one of the fastest growing research topics. In 2013, the observation of the first uncontested polar…
Recently, it has been shown how topological phases of matter with crystalline symmetry and $U(1)$ charge conservation can be partially characterized by a set of many-body invariants, the discrete shift $\mathscr{S}_{\text{o}}$ and electric…
Surface plasmons subject to a surface distortion split asymmetrically in energy resulting in a net lowering of zero-point energy. This is because surface plasmon eigenvalues are the square of frequencies, a statement generally true for…
Dynamical behaviors of a dissipative particle in a periodic potential subject to chaotic noise are reported. We discovered a macroscopic symmetry breaking effect of chaotic noise on a dissipative particle in a multi-stable systems emerging,…