In cooperation with the Center for Nano-Optics of Georgia State University in Atlanta (USA), scientists of the Laboratory for Attosecond Physics of the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics and the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität have made simulations of the processes that happen when a layer of carbon atoms is irradiated with strong …

photo credit: Silver atoms at the vertices (green) and faces (purple) of an icosahedron, with sulfur (yellow) and carbon (green) forming ligands around the central superatom, acts almost identically to gold in the same format. Credit: Osman Bakr, KAUST
Alchemists dreamed of turning base metals to gold, but probably wouldn’t have …

Schematic image, showing the PCBM nanoribbons, comprising four PCBM molecules organized side by side. The grey balls represent the fullerene molecules (each consist of 60 carbon atoms), and the attached side arms are characteristic for PCBM molecules. The white “speed tracks” represent the ability for the nanoribbons to form electronic …

Graphene/WSe2 (2-D material)/graphene heterostructure. Credit: ICFO-Fabien Vialla
Ultra-fast detection of light lies at the heart of optical communication systems nowadays. Driven by the internet of things and 5G, data communication bandwidth is growing exponentially, thus requiring even faster optical detectors that can be integrated into photonic circuits.

In the recent work published …