#interfaces

Typically research has focused on the effects induced by different materials in graphene. Convinced that this is only half the story, Dr Zeila Zanolli turned the tables to look at the proximity effects of graphene on magnetic semiconducting substrates. Using first principles calculations she observes a switching of internal spin alignment from antiferromagnetic to ferromagnetic. Persisting close to room temperature, her findings could find applications in magnetic memories or spin filters.

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In a refreshing change of perspective, theoretical physicist Dr Zeila Zanolli has looked at the proximity effects of graphene on a magnetic semiconducting substrate, finding it to affect the substrate’s magnetism down to several layers below the surface. Her paper was published on 5 October in Physical Review B. She was also one of three recipients of the first MaX Prize for frontier research in computational materials science.

Temperature is tough to measure, especially in shock compression experiments. A big challenge is having to account for thermal transport—the flow of energy in the form of heat.

To better understand this challenge, researchers from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) have taken important steps to show that thermal conduction is important and measurable at high pressureandtemperature conditions in these types of experiments, according to a paper recently published in the Journal of Applied Physics. The paper’s authors are David Brantley, Ryan Crum and Minta Akin.

“We need better temperature measurements because understanding rocky-type planetary materials’ high temperature and pressure behavior is key to developing better models of Earth and other terrestrial exoplanets,” said David Brantley, LLNL physicist and lead author of the paper.

Brantley said that depending on how iron conducts heat at Earth’s core pressure and temperatures, the planet’s solid inner core could be around 500 million to several billion years old.

Wettability of a material is the ability of a liquid to maintain contact with a solid surface, and it is proportional to hydrophilicity and inversely proportional to hydrophobicity. It is one of the most important properties of a solid, and understanding the wettability of different substrates is essential for various industrial uses, such as desalination, coating agents, and water electrolytes.

So far, studies on the wettability of substrates have mainly been measured at the macroscopic level. The macroscopic measurement of wettability is typically determined by measuring the water contact angle (WCA), which is the angle a water droplet makes with respect to the surface of the substrate. However, it is currently very difficult to accurately measure what happens at the interface between a substrate and water at the molecular level.

Currently used microscopic measurement techniques, such as reflection-based infrared spectroscopy or Raman spectroscopy, are incapable of selectively observing the interfacial water molecules. Since the number of water molecules in the entire bulk of the liquid is much larger than the molecules that are making contact with the surface, the signal of interfacial water molecules is obscured by the signal of water molecules in the bulk liquid.