Self-motion of physical-chemical systems is a promising avenue for studying and developing mechanical functions with inanimate systems. In this paper, we investigate spontaneous motion of collections of solid macroscopic benzoquinone (BQ) disks at the air-water interface without intervention of chemical reactions. The BQ particles slowly dissolve and create heterogeneous interfacial tension fie...

Taming interfacial electronic effects on Pt nanoparticles modulated by their concomitants has emerged as an intriguing approach to optimize Pt catalytic performance. Here, we report Pt nanoparticles assembled on vacancy-abundant hexagonal boron nitride nanosheets and their use as a model catalyst to embrace an interfacial electronic effect on Pt induced by the nanosheets with N-vacancies and B-...

The bonding strength and interfacial electronic properties of biphenyldimethyldithiol (HS– CH2–C6H4–C6H4–CH2–SH) adsorbed on Au(111) and polycrystalline cobalt are identifi ed from combined photoemission and inverse photoemission. In order to develop a better understanding of the thiol functional group to metal surface interaction, the stable orientation, bonding site, bonding strength and inte...

Energy dissipation chemical force microscopy has been used to analyze the dissipative properties of chemically similar regions of hydroxyl- and carboxyl-terminated SAMs on gold with a hydroxyl-terminated tip. Energy dissipation imaging quantitatively isolates dissipative interfacial interactions from topography, producing a significantly more informative image than phase imaging. Also, energy d...

Nanoparticles with grafted layers of ligand molecules behave as soft colloids when they adsorb at fluid-fluid interfaces. The ligand brush can deform and reconfigure, adopting a lens-shaped configuration at the interface. This behavior strongly affects the interactions between soft nanoparticles at fluid-fluid interfaces, which have proven challenging to probe experimentally. We measure the sur...

The unique physical and mechanical properties of polymer nanocomposites have been attributed to the interfacial interactions between the organic matrix and nanoscale particles. We demonstrate the potential to tune this interaction between poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) and silica nanoparticles, as a function of either nanosilica surface chemistry or polymer reactivity. Functionalized nanosili...

Anode materials play an important role in determining the performance of lithium ion batteries. In experiment, graphene (GR)/metal oxide (MO) composites possess excellent electrochemical properties and are promising anode materials. Here we perform density functional theory calculations to explore the interfacial interaction between GR and MO. Our result reveals generally weak physical interact...

The miniaturization of future electronic devices requires the knowledge of interfacial properties between two-dimensional channel materials and high-κ dielectrics in the limit of one atomic layer thickness. In this report, by combining particle-swarm optimization method with first-principles calculations, we present a detailed study of structural, electronic, mechanical, and dielectric properti...

Partition of unity enrichment techniques are developed for bimaterial interface cracks. A discontinuous function and the two-dimensional near-tip asymptotic displacement functions are added to the finite element approximation using the framework of partition of unity. This enables the domain to be modelled by finite elements without explicitly meshing the crack surfaces. The crack-tip enrichmen...

Molecular dynamics simulations are utilized to predict the effect of Al-O interaction parameter on the contact angle and thermal interface conductance across aluminum-water interfaces. The impact of the current work is two-fold. First, through comparison with experimental data, refined Leonard-Jones parameters for Al-O are estimated. Second, a range of interaction parameters between Al and wate...