Van der Waals forces represent a fundamental type of interaction between molecules. Named after the Dutch physicist Johannes Diderik van der Waals, these intermolecular forces include attractions and ...

Certain two-dimensional (2D) van der Waals-bonded bilayers (e.g., WTe₂ and h-BN) exhibit “sliding ferroelectricity (SF),” where electric polarization arises from specific stacking configurations ...

Two-dimensional (2D) materials, which are only a few atoms thick, are known to exhibit unique electrical, mechanical and optical properties, which differ considerably from the properties of bulk ...

Rice University scientists find the ubiquitous, ''weak'' van der Waals force is sufficient to indent rigid nanosheets, hinting at applications in nanoscale optics or catalytic systems. You have to ...

Van der Waals forces, once deemed too weak for structural integrity, have been shown to create stable, highly porous frameworks with exceptional thermal resilience and reversible assembly, paving the ...

TeYu Chien, a UW associate professor of physics and astronomy, and Dinesh Baral, a UW graduate student, led research that used scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy measurements that clearly ...

Scientists in China have devised what they describe as the molecular equivalent of a compass to measure the weak van der Waals interactions between atoms. They did so by using a new kind of electron ...

In general, when you measure material properties such as optical permittivity, your measurement doesn’t depend on the direction in which you make it. However, recent research has shown that this is ...

Previously controversial values of the energy gap of a van der Waals material -- chromium tribromide -- were reported based on various optical measurements. A University of Wyoming faculty member and ...