Hosted by Brad Ramshaw

Chemical Bonds in Square Nets and their Relation to Topology

The very simple structural motif of a square net has gained interest from both, solid-state chemists and condensed-matter physicists, for a long time. The fascinating aspect from the chemistry perspective is the nature of chemical bonding in the motif. If composed if main group elements, in can feature a delocalized, “hypervalent” bond, which violates conventional electron counting schemes. In this talk, I am going to show how this type of bonding can be related to a topological band structure. After establishing this relation, it becomes possible to identify, synthesize and study a variety of new topological semimetals. I will introduce several of these during this talk.

Poster