Materials researchers are trained to innovate and create. But now that it is clear the world has too much stuff, what is the path forward?

Time for a rare bit of explicit self-promotion on this blog.  This coming Thursday, October 9, as part of the American Chemical Society 's a...

Reporters engage in charm and betrayal; checkers are in the harm-reduction business.

In cellular automata, simple rules create elaborate structures. Now researchers can start with the structures and reverse-engineer the rules.

Self-promotional language may attract readers but is discouraged in Communications Psychology. Because style matters in fostering credibility.

The main aspects of the EU’s long-term budget for 2028-2034, its revenue and spending areas, as well as factsheets on key aspects are available on this page.

ABSTRACT. Social media tools have revolutionized how people communicate with one another. A 2018 paper in Fisheries summarized the use of Twitter, Facebook

Despite an uncertain future, this postdoc will “keep doing the science I love while I still have a bench”

Ordered arrays of nanocrystals, called supercrystals, have attracted significant attention owing to the collective quantum effects arising from the coupling between neighboring nanocrystals. In particular, lead halide perovskite nanocrystals are widely used because of the combination of the optical properties and faceted cubic shape, which enables the formation of highly ordered supercrystals. The most frequently used method for the fabrication of perovskite supercrystals is based on the self-assembly of nanocrystals from solution via slow evaporation of the solvent. However, the supercrystals produced with this technique grow in random positions on the substrate. Moreover, they are mechanically soft due to the presence of organic ligands around the individual nanocrystals. Therefore, such supercrystals cannot be easily manipulated with microgrippers, which hinders their use in applications. In this work, we synthesize mechanically robust supercrystals built from cubic lead halide perovskite nanocrystals by a two-layer phase diffusion self-assembly with acetonitrile as the antisolvent. This method yields highly faceted thick supercrystals, which are robust enough to be picked up and relocated by microgrippers. We employed X-ray nanodiffraction together with high-resolution scanning electron microscopy and atomic force microscopy to reveal the structure of CsPbBr3, CsPbBr2Cl, and CsPbCl3 supercrystals assembled using the two-layer phase diffusion technique and explain their unusual mechanical robustness. Our findings are crucial for further experiments and applications in which supercrystals need to be placed in a precise location, for example, between the electrodes in an electro-optical modulator.

Subject description The Nanochemistry and Spectroscopy group (https://www.chemphys.lu.se/research/groups/baranov-group/) at the Division of Chemical Physics is seeking a post-doctoral researcher to st