Category Archives: material science

Luminescence in hexagonal boron nitride single layer: exciton-phonon coupling and the role of substrate

In this new work we study luminescence in monolayer hexagonal boron nitride (m-hBN) using a new ab-initio approach that takes into account the effects of atomic vibrations on the luminescence spectra. We construct the dynamical exciton-phonon self-energy, then use it to perturbatively correct the optical response functions and test this approach on bulk hBN as… Read More

Direct and indirect excitons in boron nitride polymorphs: a story of atomic configurations and electronic correlation

In this work we study how different atomic configurations, and electronic correlation modify the exciton dispersion in hexagonal boron nitride. We use two different approaches, ab-initio DFT plus many-body perturbation theory and tight-binding. We found that in the case of AB-stacking electronic correlation inverts the nature of the optical gap, from indirect to direct respect… Read More

Stuff Matters

When my friend Lorenzo suggested me this book I was a bit sceptic. I thought that a book on material science could be boring. It is not astrophysics, there are not black holes, stars or galaxies. But Mark Miodownik is able to make material science interesting and absorbing. The book starts with a picture of… Read More