Electronic structure as a research area focuses on the quantum-mechanical description of electrons in atoms, molecules, solids, and nanostructures, and on how this governs their structural, spectroscopic, and transport properties. It encompasses the development and application of theoretical methods such as density functional theory, wavefunction-based quantum chemistry, many-body perturbation theory, and quantum Monte Carlo to compute energies, charge densities, band structures, and excited states. The field underpins predictive materials design, catalysis, electronic and photonic device engineering, and strongly correlated systems research by linking microscopic electron behavior to macroscopic observables and emergent phenomena.
Electrons are tiny and constantly in motion. How they behave in a crystal lattice determines key material properties: electrical conductivity, magnetism, or novel quantum effects. Anyone aiming to develop the information ...
Condensed Matter
Mar 15, 2026
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Although the potential applications of quantum computing are widespread, a new feasibility study suggests quantum computers still face major hurdles in solving quantum chemistry problems. The study, published in Physical ...
By placing single-atom-thick adlayers of p-block metals on commonly employed gold electrodes (d-block), a research team at National Taiwan University has successfully quantified the "interfacial hopping integral" between ...
Nanophysics
Mar 13, 2026
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To unlock materials of the future, including better photocatalysts or light-switchable superconductors, researchers need to understand how the valence electrons within materials respond to light at the atomic scale. Materials ...
Condensed Matter
Mar 11, 2026
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Electron movement and structures described in quantum physics allow researchers to better understand how and why materials like superconductors behave as they do. Rice University researchers Jianwei Huang and Ming Yi have ...
Superconductivity
Mar 11, 2026
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Researchers from the Department of Physics and the University Institute of Materials at the University of Alicante (UA) and the Low Temperature and High Magnetic Field Laboratory at the Autonomous University of Madrid (UAM) ...
Condensed Matter
Mar 10, 2026
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Researchers from Germany, Japan and India, led by scientists from DESY and the Universities of Kiel and Hamburg, have found a way to collectively make molecules on a flat surface rotate by exposing them to light using ultrafast ...
Optics & Photonics
Mar 9, 2026
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Superconductivity is a quantum state of matter characterized by an electrical resistance of zero and the expulsion of magnetic fields at low temperatures below a critical point. Superconductors, materials in which this state ...
An international team of scientists from IBM, The University of Manchester, Oxford University, ETH Zurich, EPFL and the University of Regensburg have created and characterized a molecule unlike any previously known—one whose ...
Condensed Matter
Mar 5, 2026
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167
The best candidate for next-generation magnetic devices—technology that can power, store, sense or transport information—may be, counterintuitively, antiferromagnets. Today, the most widely used magnetic materials are ferromagnets, ...
Condensed Matter
Mar 3, 2026
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