{"id":477046,"date":"2026-05-09T23:57:13","date_gmt":"2026-05-09T23:57:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/477046\/"},"modified":"2026-05-09T23:57:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-09T23:57:13","slug":"scientists-discover-a-new-way-to-control-metals-at-the-atomic-scale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/477046\/","title":{"rendered":"Scientists Discover a New Way To Control Metals at the Atomic Scale"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Strange<\/a>A new study demonstrates that manipulating atomic-scale interfaces can significantly change how a metal behaves electronically. Credit: Stock<\/p>\n

The discovery could help make electronics faster and more energy efficient.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Researchers at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities<\/a> have found a new way to change how a metal behaves electronically by controlling atomic-level interactions at the boundary where two materials meet.<\/p>\n

The study, published in Nature Communications, shows that interfacial polarization can shift the surface work function of metallic ruthenium dioxide (RuO2) by more than 1 electron volt (eV), simply by changing film thickness at the nanometer scale.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe often think of polarization as something that belongs to insulators or ferroelectrics\u2014not metals,\u201d said Bharat Jalan, professor and Shell Chair in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science at the University of Minnesota. \u201cOur work shows that, through careful interface design, you can stabilize polarization in a metallic system and use it as a knob to tune electronic properties. This opens an entirely new way of thinking about controlling metals.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Seung<\/a>Seung Gyo Jeong (left) and senior author Bharat Jalan (right) have created a new path toward tunable catalysis and electronics in this latest paper. Credit: Kalie Pluchel, University of Minnesota-Twin CitiesAtomic packing changes conductivity<\/p>\n

The effect becomes strongest when the metal film is about 4 nanometers thick, roughly the width of a single strand of DNA. At that scale, the metal changes from a \u201cstretched\u201d arrangement imposed by the underlying material to a more \u201crelaxed\u201d structure. That shift shows that the way atoms are physically arranged can directly and measurably influence how a metal conducts and responds to electricity.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis was surprising,\u201d said Seung Gyo Jeong, first author of the study and a researcher in Jalan\u2019s group. \u201cWe expected subtle interface effects, but not such a large and controllable change in work function. Being able to visualize the polar displacements at the atomic scale and connect them directly to electronic measurements was especially exciting.\u201d<\/p>\n

The discovery goes beyond basic physics and could help guide the development of future electronic, catalytic, and quantum devices.<\/p>\n

Reference: \u201cStrain-stabilized interfacial polarization tunes work function over 1\u2009eV in RuO2\/TiO2 heterostructures\u201d by Seung Gyo Jeong, Bonnie Y. X. Lin, Mengru Jin, In Hyeok Choi, Seungjun Lee, Zhifei Yang, Sreejith Nair, Rashmi Choudhary, Juhi Parikh, Anand Santhosh, Matthew Neurock, Kelsey A. Stoerzinger, Jong Seok Lee, Tony Low, Qing Tu, James M. LeBeau and Bharat Jalan, 9 February 2026, Nature Communications.
DOI: 10.1038\/s41467-026-69200-x<\/a><\/p>\n

The research was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.<\/p>\n

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Follow us on Google<\/a> and Google News<\/a>.<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A new study demonstrates that manipulating atomic-scale interfaces can significantly change how a metal behaves electronically. Credit: Stock…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":477047,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[77],"tags":[18,1306,19,17,909,913,1098,133,32435],"class_list":{"0":"post-477046","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-eire","9":"tag-electronics","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-materials-science","13":"tag-nanotechnology","14":"tag-quantum-physics","15":"tag-science","16":"tag-university-of-minnesota"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116547332000444759","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477046","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=477046"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477046\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/477047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=477046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=477046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=477046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}