Metal-insulator-like behavior in semimetallic bismuth and graphite.

Induction of a photostationary ring-opening-ring-closing state of spiropyran monolayers on the semimetallic Bi(110) surface.

Molecular switches on metal surfaces typically show very little photoreactivity. Using scanning tunneling microscopy, we show that the ring-opening-ring-closing switch nitrospiropyran thermally and optically isomerizes to the open merocyanine form on a Bi(110) surface. Irradiation by blue light of a monolayer of spiropyran molecules leads to mixed domains of the two isomers. At large illuminati...

Contribution to the Conductivity of Bc 3

Recently the new graphitic material, BC 3, has been shown to exhibit electrical conductance which is 10% larger than graphite. In order to explain this behavior we show that in the BC 3 monolayer the Fermi level lies at the top of the o bands and that the semimetallic behavior, which appears upon stacking of the semiconducting monolayers, arises from the simultaneous presence of o and ~ bands a...

Point contact Andreev reflection from semimetallic bismuth—The roles of the minority carriers and the large spin-orbit coupling

Electron Confinement, Orbital Ordering, and Orbital Moments in d-d Oxide Heterostructures

The (SrTiO3)m/(SrVO3)n d 0 − d multilayer system is studied with first principles methods through the observed insulator-to-metal transition with increasing thickness of the SrVO3 layer. When correlation effects with reasonable magnitude are included, crystal field splittings from the structural relaxations together with spin-orbit coupling (SOC) determines the behavior of the electronic and ma...

Quantum conductance in semimetallic bismuth nanocontacts.

Electronic transport properties of bismuth nanocontacts are analyzed using a low temperature scanning tunneling microscope. The subquantum steps observed in the conductance versus elongation curves give evidence of atomic rearrangements in the contact. The quantum nature of the conductance reveals itself through peaks in the conductance histograms. The shape of the curves at 77 K is described b...