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 ...

This is a stylized rendition of single walled carbon nanotubes that are just one atom thick in diameter. The red zones show where the attraction caused by van der Waals forces has bent or "zipped" two ...

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 ...

Modelling dispersion interactions with traditional density functional theory (DFT) is a challenge that has been extensively addressed in the past decade. The exchange-dipole moment (XDM), among others ...

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 ...