Amid the possibility space of crystalline compounds are ones that can be readily turned into one-dimensional (1D) materials with desirable properties. A team at the University of Florida, Gainesville, has now provided explorers of that space with a map of sorts. Joshua Paul and his colleagues have demonstrated a way to sift the Materials Project database—an open-access encyclopedia of more than 100,000 compounds—for crystals that should readily separate into stable 1D nanowires [1]. Among the crystals pinpointed by the team are compounds that could yield nanowires with applications in spintronics and quantum technologies.
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