Here, a comprehensive study on the synthesis, characterization, and reactivity of grain-boundary (GB)-rich noble metal nanoparticle (NP) assemblies is presented. A facile scalable synthesis Pt, Pd, Au, Ag, Rh NP developed, in which NPs are predominantly connected via Σ3 (111) twin GBs, forming network. Driven by water electrolysis, random collisions oriented attachment colloidal solution lead t...

Interactions between metal and atomically thin two-dimensional (2D) materials can exhibit interesting physical behaviors that are of both fundamental interests and technological importance. In addition to forming a metal–semiconductor Schottky junction that is critical for electrical transport, metal deposited on 2D layered materials can also generate a local mechanical strain. We investigate t...

The EtMe(3)P and EtMe(3)Sb triangular organic salts are distinguished from other Pd[(dmit)(2)] based salts, as they display valence bond and no long-range order, respectively. Under pressure, a superconducting phase is revealed in EtMe(3)P near the boundary of valence bond order. We use slave-rotor theory with an enlarged unit cell to study competition between uniform and broken translational s...

We present a microscopic theory of quantum-size effects in surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) from molecules adsorbed on small metal nanoparticles. In noble-metal nanoparticles, the confining potential has different effect on s-band and d-band electrons. Namely, the spillout of delocalized sp-electrons beyond the classical nanoparticle boundary results in an incomplete embedding of s-elec...

The Mott metal-insulator transition in the two-band Hubbard model in infinite dimensions is studied by using the linearized dynamical mean-field theory recently developed by Bulla and Potthoff. The phase boundary of the metal-insulator transition is obtained analytically as a function of the onsite Coulomb interaction at the d-orbital, the charge-transfer energy between the dand p-orbitals and ...

Surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) and standing wave modes provide interesting and exotic properties for infrared metamaterial absorbers. Coupling of these modes promises further development in this field but restricted by the complexity of modes analysis. In this work, we investigate the general phenomenon of modes coupling supported by a metal (with grating)-dielectric-metal sandwich structure...

The flows of heat and electricity in a column-type micro-thermoelectric cooler are analyzed by modeling the various interfacial resistances. Electron (barrier tunneling) and phonon (diffuse mismatch) boundary resistances at the thermoelectric/metal interface, and thermal non-equilibrium between electrons and phonons adjacent to this interface (cooling length), increase the thermal conduction re...