Recently, two-dimensional materials have been extensively studied. Due to the reduced dielectric screening and confinement of electrons in two dimensions, these materials show dramatically different electronic and optical properties from their bulk counterparts. So far, studies on twodimensional materials have mainly focused on crystalline materials. Here we report studies of atomically thin am...

The bonding arrangement in amorphous materials plays a dominant role in determining their electrochemical, optical and transport properties. However, it remains a challenge to manipulate amorphous structures in a controlled manner. Recently, scientists at the Molecular Foundry at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) developed synthetic protocols for incorporating well-defined nanocrysta...

Solutions of maltodextrins (MD) with the dextrose equivalent (D.E.) 9-12 and D.E. 23-27 were mixed with lactose solutions at different ratios. Freeze-dried amorphous solids of lactose and lactose-MD were prepared from solutions containing 20% total solids. The ratios of lactose and MD were 90:10, 80:20, and 70:30 (w/w). Crystallization rate of amorphous lactose was followed from changes in wate...

This review seeks to summarize the recent developments in the synthesis, structural characterization, properties, and applications in the ®elds of amorphous, bulk amorphous, and nanocrystalline soft magnetic materials. Conventional physical metallurgical approaches to improving soft ferromagnetic properties have relied on the optimization of chemical and microstructural features. Within the las...

We propose a novel approach to model amorphous materials using a first principles density functional method while simultaneously enforcing agreement with selected experimental data. We illustrate our method with applications to amorphous silicon and glassy GeSe2. The structural, vibrational and electronic properties of the models are found to be in agreement with experimental results. The metho...

Amorphous materials are often preferred in the pharmaceutical industry due to their enhanced dissolution rate and bioavailability. Since the amorphous state is metastable and less thermodynamically stable relative to the crystalline state, there is always the potential for unexpected crystallization during storage. Conversion of amorphous to crystalline state can be evaluated by stability studi...

Photostructural transformations in amorphous films of chalcogenide glasses (ChG) under light irradiation present scientific and practical interests. That is well known that the composition of ChG determines the kind of structural units and the mean coordination number. In the present work the amorphous films of the chalcogenide systems As100-xSex (x=40÷98), As40Se60:Sny (y=0÷10.0 at.% Sn), as w...

The value measured in the amorphous structure with the same chemical composition is often considered as a lower bound for the thermal conductivity of any material: the heat carriers are strongly scattered by disorder, and their lifetimes reach the minimum time scale of thermal vibrations. An appropriate design at the nano-scale, however, may allow one to reduce the thermal conductivity even bel...

Ge-Sb-Te alloys, which belong to the phase-change materials, are promising materials for data storage and display and data visualization applications due to their unique properties. This includes a remarkable difference of their electrical and optical properties in the amorphous and crystalline state. Pronounced change of optical properties for Ge-Sb-Te alloys is linked to the different bonding...

In this paper, we review some recent work on amorphous materials using current “first principles” electronic structure/molecular dynamics techniques. The main theme of the paper is to emphasize new directions in the use of such ab initio methods. Some of these, being quite new, need development, but we believe have promise for solving new and important kinds of problems in the physics of glassy...