Yet Another Cover before Christmas

The 2013 year-end issue of ACS Nano features an image I've designed for a featured articel from our group: Intrinsic Magnetism of Grain Boundaries in Two-Dimensional Metal Dichalcogenides. The simulated transmission electron microscopy (STM) image shows two metal-dichalcogenide domains tilted at a 22° angle and stitched together by the dreidel-like 5|7 dislocations along a curved grain boundary, which theory predicts to be ferromagnetic (purple and yellow in the ball-and-stick models correspond to molybdenum and sulfur atoms, respectively.) Such nano-magnets may someday help to navigate the as yet unexplored flatlands of two-dimensional materials. The STM image and optimized geometries of the 5|7 "dreidel"-like fragments were provided by Z. Zhang.