In supramolecular materials, multiple weak binding groups can act as a single collective unit when confined to a localized volume, thereby producing strong but dynamic bonds between material building blocks. This principle of multivalency provides a versat ...
Sorption of mercury (Hg) in soils is suggested to be predominantly associated with organic matter (OM). However, there is a growing collection of research that suggests that clay minerals and oxides are also important solid phases for the sorption of solu ...
Stabilizing liquid-liquid interfaces, whether between miscible or immiscible liquids, is crucial for a wide range of applications, including energy storage, microreactors, and biomimetic structures. In this study, a versatile approach for stabilizing the w ...
Polymer brushes, which are polymers anchored to a solid substrate by one chainend, have the ability to modify the properties of an underlying substrate, offering
intriguing features such as enhanced lubrication, reduced friction, colloidal stability, and a ...
TiO2 quantum dot (QD) size nanoparticle colloids have shown tremendous photochromic response. Here we show that the of the photochromic response of TiO2 QDs can be further enhanced by doping. Our synthesis approach allows to reach high nominal doping level ...
The presence of metal salts has become one of the major limitations for measuring metallic nanoparticles (NPs) in single particle inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (spICP-MS). Their presence generates a background signal in spICP-MS that can be ...
In the third study, the order-disorder phase transition of single-crystal C60 is studied using time-resolved electron microscopy. Solid C60 undergoes a first-order phase transition upon heating to 260 K. This is a structural transition from the low-tempera ...
The presence of metallic nanoparticles (NPs) in aerosols has raised concern about their fate in the environment through natural processes and anthropological activities. The state-of-the-art technologies for direct aerosol characterization cannot reach rea ...
Starting from our big universe to the microscopic world, phase transitions play an important role in nature. Just after the Big Bang our universe experienced multiple phase transitions, from high-temperature plasma to the matter we know today.
Phase transi ...
Phase transitions in condensed matter are a source of exotic emergent properties. We study the fully frustrated bilayer Heisenberg antiferromagnet to demonstrate that an applied magnetic field creates a previously unknown emergent criticality. The quantum ...
Superlattice formation afforded by metal halide perovskite nanocrystals has been a phenomenon of interest due to the high structural order induced in these self-assemblies, an order that is influenced by the surface chemistry and particle morphology of the ...
Understanding the behavior of surfactants at interfaces is crucial for many applications in materials science and chemistry. Optical tweezers combined with trajectory analysis can become a powerful tool for investigating surfactant characteristics. In this ...
Bio-based resins, obtained from renewable raw materials, are a more sustainable alternative to oil-based resins for fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) composites. The incorporation of lignin in those resins has the potential to enhance their performance. This ...
We show that including pairing and repulsion into the description of one-dimensional spinless fermions, as in the domain wall theory of commensurate melting or the interacting Kitaev chain, leads, for strong enough repulsion, to a line of critical points i ...
We study the performance of Markov chains for the q-state ferromagnetic Potts model on random regular graphs. While the cases of the grid and the complete graph are by now well-understood, the case of random regular graphs has resisted a detailed analysis ...
Recent advancements in miniature devices with higher computational capabilities and ultralow power consumption have accelerated the development of wearable sensors, actuators, and energy harvesters everywhere. The ultimate aim of such a technological revol ...
Associative surfactants systems involving polar oils have recently been shown to stabilize immiscible liquids by forming nanostructures at the liquid interface and have been used to print soft materials. Although these associating surfactant systems show g ...
Magnetic skyrmions are nanometric and non-trivial spin textures with non-zero topological charge. Their robustness against perturbations and the possibility to control them using external stimuli make them ideal candidates for future spintronic application ...
In this thesis, we study systems of active particles interacting via generic torques of different nature. We analyze the phase behavior of these systems, which results from the interplay between self-propulsion, excluded-volume and torques.
We tackle the p ...
The control of the aggregation of biomedical nanoparticles (NP) in physiological conditions is crucial as clustering may change completely the way they interact with the biological environment. Here we show that Au nanoparticles, functionalized by an anion ...
