Dirac and Weyl materials: A chemist's approach to exotic physic

From predictions of fundamental particles over 70 years ago, scientists today are closing in on experimentally finding the full set of Fermions. The recent interest in the field was stimulated by the realization of massless Dirac and Weyl fermions in simple, easy to make, chemical compounds which allowed for an explosion of research with chemists, theoretical physicists, mathematicians and experimental physicists all making ground breaking contributions. The materials hosting this exotic physics (Dirac and Weyl semimetals such as Cd₃As₂, WTe₂, TaAs and others) are highly dissimilar in terms of chemical composition and crystal structure, yet they have very similar electronic structures. Stemming from those electronic structures, these materials have exhibited ultrahigh carrier mobility, titanic magnetoresistance and very fast photoexcitation relaxation times, in single crystal form. Now we aim to make thin films of these materials and investigate both change in the fundamental physics from size and heterostructure effects, as well as to make devices taking advantage of the new Fermions and their exciting properties.