Kyoto University Institute for Advanced Study

Poly(pentafulvalene)s: One-Dimensional Conjugated Hydrocarbons toward Stable and Narrow-Bandgap Polyenes

Polyacetylene is the archetypal narrow-bandgap conjugated polymer, yet its high-lying HOMO renders it air-sensitive, and aromatic alternatives sacrifice the small bandgap inherent to a polyene backbone. Here we show that embedding the polyene in a dibenzopentafulvalene (DBF) fram...

Aqueous Zinc Batteries as an Accessible Platform for Interdisciplinary Energy Storage Innovation

Aqueous zinc batteries (AZBs) are often discussed as safer and more sustainable alternatives to lithium‐ion batteries. This comparison is important, but it may understate another distinctive value of AZBs, namely that they provide a comparatively accessible experimental platform...

High-harmonic Generation Spectroscopy in van der Waals Materials: Accessing Bloch Wavefunctions and Their Scattering Processes

High-harmonic generation (HHG) — an extreme nonlinear response to strong light fields — has emerged as a promising tool for probing femtosecond-to-attosecond electron dynamics in crystalline solids. This special topic article presents a perspective on how HHG spectroscopy has bee...