Crystalline clusters in mW water: Stability, growth, and grain boundaries

Grains and grain boundaries in highly crystalline monolayer molybdenum disulphide.

Recent progress in large-area synthesis of monolayer molybdenum disulphide, a new two-dimensional direct-bandgap semiconductor, is paving the way for applications in atomically thin electronics. Little is known, however, about the microstructure of this material. Here we have refined chemical vapour deposition synthesis to grow highly crystalline islands of monolayer molybdenum disulphide up to...

Stability and crystallization of amorphous clusters in crystalline Si

We have simulated using molecular dynamics the thermal stability and crystallization kinetics of nanometre-sized clusters of amorphous Si embedded in crystalline Si, which are of interest for phase-change memory devices. We have calculated the interfacial and bulk excess energies of the amorphous clusters, and studied their crystallization kinetics at 700–1500 K. At temperatures below (above) 1...

Chemical stability of grain boundaries in β-tricalcium phosphate ceramics

Grain boundaries: a possible water reservoir in the Earth’s mantle?

The Earth is a wet planet, where water is recycled from the mantle to the surface and back again. The mantle is generally too hot for the stability of hydrous minerals and too cold to store water within significant melt sheets. Therefore, the current paradigm in geosciences is that water resides and moves only through point defects in nominally anhydrous minerals such as olivine, pyroxene and g...

Polarization-resolved spectroscopy imaging of grain boundaries and optical excitations in crystalline organic thin films

Exploration of optical properties of organic crystalline semiconductors thin films is challenging due to submicron grain sizes and the presence of numerous structural defects, disorder and grain boundaries. Here we report on the results of combined linear dichroism (LD)/ polarization-resolved photoluminescence (PL) scanning microscopy experiments that simultaneously probe the excitonic radiativ...