Universitą degli studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia

Low-dimensional materials are systems whose size in one or more spatial directions is sufficiently small to confine electronic states. The reduced dimensionality, with the corresponding change in phase space and the suppressed screening of electron-electron interactions, leads to a plethora of emergent phenomena and exceptional properties not displayed by their 3D counterparts. Similar effects can appear also at the surface of bulk materials or close to the interface between different compounds.

Modelling and simulating low-dimensional systems provide unprecedented and stimulating challenges. The purpose of this research group is to predict and design through advanced first-principles simulations a wide range of phenomena arising in novel low-dimensional materials, from 1D carbon nanotubes and graphene nanoribbons, to 2D exfoliable materials and their heterostructures. Particular emphasis is given to excitonic and topological insulators, magnetism, many-body phenomena, optical excitations, phonons and their interactions with electrons.