Nano-scale Design of New Catalysts Based on Fundamental Insight into Surface Reactivity at the Atomic Scale

Atomic Insights into the Melting Behavior of Metallic Nano-catalysts

In the present study, molecular dynamics simulations have been utilized to provide fundamental understanding of melting behavior of pure Pd and Pt nanoparticles with the size of 10 nm in diameter, both free and graphene-supported during continuous heating. The embedded atom method is employed to model the metal-metal interactions, whereas a Lennard-Jones potential is applied to describe the met...

An insight into effect of surface functional groups on reactivity of Sphalerite (110) surface with Xanthate collector: a DFT study

The reactivity of the protonated and hydroxylated sphalerite (1 1 0) surface with xanthate was simulated using the density functional theory (DFT). The difference between the energy of the lowest unoccupied molecular orbital of the sphalerite surface and the energy of the highest occupied molecular orbital of xanthate (  was used to compare the reaction capability of xanthate with fresh and fun...

Atomic scale memory at a silicon surface

The limits of pushing storage density to the atomic scale are explored with a memory that stores a bit by the presence or absence of one silicon atom. These atoms are positioned at lattice sites along self-assembled tracks with a pitch of five atom rows. The memory can be initialized and reformatted by controlled deposition of silicon. The writing process involves the transfer of Si atoms to th...

Mitophagy: New Insight into the Cardiovascular Aging  

Friction at the Atomic Scale

Everyone learns the basics of friction in high-school physics classes: the friction force experienced by a sliding object is proportional to the normal force that an object exerts on a surface. Remarkably, this extremely simple and empirical relation, known as Amontons’ Law, is still often used in creating the most technologically sophisticated machines and devices, even though friction is know...