In groundbreaking materials research, a team led by University of Minnesota Professor K. Andre Mkhoyan has made a discovery that blends the best of two sought-after qualities for touchscreens and smart windows—transparency ...
Materials Science
Jan 15, 2021
0
2829
A recent special issue of the Journal of Chemical Physics highlights Pacific Northwest National Laboratory's (PNNL) contributions to developing two prominent open-source software packages for computational chemistry used ...
General Physics
Jan 07, 2021
1
42
Our understanding of biological proteins does not always correlate with how common or important they are. Half of all proteins, molecules that play an integral role in cell processes, are intrinsically disordered, which means ...
Bio & Medicine
Dec 28, 2020
0
95
Researchers have revealed the first atomic structures of the respiratory apparatus that plants use to generate energy, according to a study published today in eLife.
Cell & Microbiology
Jan 19, 2021
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4
In a study published in Advanced Materials, researchers from Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale, the University of Science and Technology of China of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, using an ...
Materials Science
Jan 08, 2021
0
9
The gallium selenide monolayer has been recently discovered to have an alternative crystal structure and has diverse potential applications in electronics. Understanding its properties is crucial to understand its functions. ...
Nanophysics
Dec 24, 2020
0
9
In atomic physics and quantum chemistry, electron configuration is the arrangement of electrons of an atom, a molecule, or other physical structure. It concerns the way electrons can be distributed in the orbitals of the given system (atomic or molecular for instance).
Like other elementary particles, the electron is subject to the laws of quantum mechanics, and exhibits both particle-like and wave-like nature. Formally, the quantum state of a particular electron is defined by its wave function, a complex-valued function of space and time. According to the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, the position of a particular electron is not well defined until an act of measurement causes it to be detected. The probability that the act of measurement will detect the electron at a particular point in space is proportional to the square of the absolute value of the wavefunction at that point.
An energy is associated to each electron configuration and, upon certain conditions, electrons are able to move from one orbital to another by emission or absorption of a quantum of energy, in the form of a photon.
Knowledge of the electron configuration of different atoms is useful in understanding the structure of the periodic table of elements. The concept is also useful for describing the chemical bonds that hold atoms together. In bulk materials this same idea helps explain the peculiar properties of lasers and semiconductors.
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