All posts by Denis Frath

The optically tuneable nature of hybrid organic/inorganic heterostructures tailored by interfacing photochromic molecules with 2D semiconductors (2DSs) can be exploited to endow multi-responsiveness to the exceptional physical properties of 2DSs. In this study, a spiropyran-molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) light-switchable bi-functional field-effect transistor is realized. The spiropyran-merocyanine reversible photo-isomerization has been employed to remotely control both the… Read More

Submonolayer amounts of chloroaluminum-phthalocyanine on Cu(100) were studied with scanning tunneling spectroscopy. The molecule can be prepared in a fourfold symmetric state whose conductance spectrum exhibits a zero-bias feature similar to a Kondo resonance. In magnetic fields, however, this resonance splits far more than expected from the spin of a single electron. Density functional theory… Read More

Zinc hybrid supercapacitors (Zn-HSCs) hold immense potential toward the next-generation energy storage systems, effectively spanning the divide between conventional lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) and supercapacitors. Unfortunately, the energy density of most of Zn-HSCs has not yet rivalled the levels observed in LIBs. The electrochemical performance of aqueous Zn-HSCs can be enhanced through the chemical functionalization of… Read More

The square ice is a canonical example of a Coulomb phase in two dimensions: Its ground state is extensively degenerate and satisfies a local constraint on the spin arrangement (the so-called ice rule). In this paper, we use a loop flip algorithm to explore the properties of this ground state that we analyze not in… Read More

Under certain experimental conditions, the deposition of C60 molecules onto an atomically flat copper surface gives rise to the formation of corrugated islands. This corrugation, which reflects a molecular displacement perpendicular to the surface plane, presents an astonishing pattern: It is well described by a frustrated Ising spin Hamiltonian whose thermodynamics is compatible with a… Read More

Artificial synapses combining multiple yet independent signal processing strategies in a single device are key enabler to achieve high-density of integration, energy efficiency and fast data manipulation in brain-like computing. By taming functional complexity, the use of hybrids comprising multiple materials as active components in synaptic devices represents a powerful route to encode both short-term… Read More

Single Atom Catalysis (SAC) is an expanding field of heterogeneous catalysis in which single metallic atoms embedded in different materials catalyze a chemical reaction, but these new catalytic materials still lack fundamental understanding when used in electrochemical environments. Recent characterizations of non-noble metals like Fe deposited on N-doped graphitic materials have evidenced two types of… Read More

The hybrid metal–organic interaction that molecular monolayers experience when deposited on metallic substrates can compete with intermolecular interactions and produce a variety of on-surface orders. The variety is already important when the molecule/substrate interface remains atomically flat. Here, we address the case of fullerene molecules deposited at room temperature on a Cu(111) surface with interface… Read More

Optically switchable field-effect transistors (OSFETs) are non-volatile photonic memory devices holding a great potential for applications in optical information storage and telecommunications. Solution processing of blends of photochromic molecules and π-conjugated polymers is a low-cost protocol to integrate simultaneously optical switching and charge transport functions in large-area devices. However, the limited reversibility of the isomerization… Read More