Important material properties can be explained at the level of quantum physics - for example, whether a material conducts electricity or not. Analysing such quantum states has now revealed that there ...

An insulator has a band structure in which occupied and empty bands are separated by an energy gap. The existence of an energy gap, however, does not guarantee that a material is a simple insulator.

Mott insulators are a unique class of materials that defy conventional band theories ... Mott transitions. When the band is half-filled and band energy is small, the carriers are localized because of ...

Semiconductor Physics and Flat Band Potential Semiconductors are materials with electrical properties that lie between those of conductors and insulators. In semiconductors, valence electrons occupy ...

Topological insulators (TIs) are among the hottest topics in condensed matter physics today. They’re a bit strange: their surfaces conduct electricity, yet their interiors do not, instead acting as ...

Electric charges on the boundaries of certain insulators are ... carriers in a solid material leads to a band structure that describes the relationship between the energy and momentum of the ...