El asta de la lanza: los mecanismos de financiación de la guerra durante el reinado de Alfonso XI (1312-1350)

To understand how it was possible for Alfonso XI to triumph militarily over his enemies, it is not enough to look at his courage, leadership and military strategies and tactics. One also has to study in depth the mechanisms he used to cover the high costs of his multiple campaigns and ordinary defense costs. In addition to the Crown’s regular fiscal resources and those taxes specifically related to warfare, Alfonso came to depend more and more on extraordinary levies, like monedas foreras, servicios, alcabalas, the temporary suspension of fiscal exemptions at the local level, the wealth of the Church, loans, and the sale of parts of the royal patrimony. These financial mechanisms opened up new sources of revenue to feed his military ambitions and truly constituted one of the most fundamental reasons for Alfonso’s success as a monarch and commander.Para entender cómo fue posible el triunfo militar de Alfonso XI sobre sus enemigos hay que mirar más allá de su valor, liderazgo y estrategias y tácticas bélicas, y estudiar a fondo los mecanismos que utilizó para sufragar los elevados costes de sus múltiples campañas y los gastos de defensa ordinarios. Además de utilizar los recursos fiscales de la Corona y los tributos tradicionales relacionados a la guerra, Alfonso dependió, cada vez más, de impuestos extraordinarios, como monedas foreras, servicios, alcabalas, la suspensión temporal de exenciones fiscales a nivel local, recursos monetarios eclesiásticos, empréstitos, y ventas de patrimonio real. Estos mecanismos financieros abrieron nuevas fuentes de ingreso para financiar sus ambiciones militares y realmente constituyeron una de las razones fundamentales del éxito de Alfonso como monarca y comandante militar

Atomically thin mica flakes and their application as ultrathin insulating substrates for graphene

We show that it is possible to deposit, by mechanical exfoliation on SiO2/Si wafers, atomically thin mica flakes down to a single monolayer thickness. The optical contrast of these mica flakes on top of a SiO2/Si substrate, which depends on their thickness, the illumination wavelength and the SiO2 substrate thickness, can be quantitatively accounted for by a Fresnel law based model. The preparation of atomically thin insulating crystalline sheets will enable the fabrication of ultrathin defect-free insulating substrates, dielectric barriers or planar electron tunneling junctions. Additionally, we show that few-layer graphene flakes can be deposited on top of a previously transferred mica flake. Our transfer method relies on viscoelastic stamps, as those used for soft lithography. A Raman spectroscopy study shows that such an all-dry deposition technique yields cleaner and higher quality flakes than conventional wet-transfer procedures based on lithographic resists.Comment: 11 pages, 5 figures, 1 graphical abstrac

Enhanced thermoelectricity in metal−[60]fullerene−graphene molecular junctions

The thermoelectric properties of molecular junctions consisting of a metal Pt electrode contacting [60]fullerene derivatives covalently bound to a graphene electrode have been studied by using a conducting-probe atomic force microscope (c-AFM). The [60]fullerene derivatives are covalently linked to the graphene via two meta-connected phenyl rings, two para-connected phenyl rings, or a single phenyl ring. We find that the magnitude of the Seebeck coefficient is up to nine times larger than that of Au-C60-Pt molecular junctions. Moreover, the sign of the thermopower can be either positive or negative depending on the details of the binding geometry and on the local value of the Fermi energy. Our results demonstrate the potential of using graphene electrodes for controlling and enhancing the thermoelectric properties of molecular junctions and confirm the outstanding performance of [60]fullerene derivativesThis work has been supported by the European Commission through FP7 ITN MOLESCO (Project Number 606728), the (MAD2D-CM)-UCM1-MRR project and through the EC H2020 FET Open Project Grant Agreement Number 767187 “QuIET”. The authors acknowledge support from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation MCIN (Projects PID2020-114653RB-I00, PID2020-115120GB-I00, Centro de Excelencia Severo Ochoa SEV-2016-0686). L.R.-G. acknowledges support from Spanish MECD (Grant No. FPU14/03368) and, with N.A., funding from the Education and Research Council of the Comunidad de Madrid and the European Social Fund (ref. PEJD-2019-POST/IND-16353

Highly reproducible low temperature scanning tunnelling microscopy and spectroscopy with in situ prepared tips

An in situ tip preparation procedure compatible with ultra-low temperature and high magnetic field scanning tunneling microscopes is presented. This procedure does not require additional preparation techniques such as thermal annealing or ion milling. It relies on the local electric-field-induced deposition of material from the tip onto the studied surface. Subsequently, repeated indentations are performed onto the sputtered cluster to mechanically anneal the tip apex and thus to ensure the stability of the tip. The efficiency of this method is confirmed by comparing the topography and spectroscopy data acquired with either unprepared or in situ prepared tips on epitaxial graphene grown on Ru (0001). We demonstrate that the use of in situ prepared tips increases the stability of the scanning tunneling images and the reproducibility of the spectroscopic measurements.Comment: 9 Pages, 4 figures (including supp. material

El asta de la lanza: los mecanismos de financiación de la guerra durante el reinado de Alfonso XI (1312-1350)

To understand how it was possible for Alfonso XI to triumph militarily over his enemies, it is not enough to look at his courage, leadership and military strategies and tactics. One also has to study in depth the mechanisms he used to cover the high costs of his multiple campaigns and ordinary defense costs. In addition to the Crown’s regular fiscal resources and those taxes specifically related to warfare, Alfonso came to depend more and more on extraordinary levies, like monedas foreras, servicios, alcabalas, the temporary suspension of fiscal exemptions at the local level, the wealth of the Church, loans, and the sale of parts of the royal patrimony. These financial mechanisms opened up new sources of revenue to feed his military ambitions and truly constituted one of the most fundamental reasons for Alfonso’s success as a monarch and commander.<br><br>Para entender cómo fue posible el triunfo militar de Alfonso XI sobre sus enemigos hay que mirar más allá de su valor, liderazgo y estrategias y tácticas bélicas, y estudiar a fondo los mecanismos que utilizó para sufragar los elevados costes de sus múltiples campañas y los gastos de defensa ordinarios. Además de utilizar los recursos fiscales de la Corona y los tributos tradicionales relacionados a la guerra, Alfonso dependió, cada vez más, de impuestos extraordinarios, como monedas foreras, servicios, alcabalas, la suspensión temporal de exenciones fiscales a nivel local, recursos monetarios eclesiásticos, empréstitos, y ventas de patrimonio real. Estos mecanismos financieros abrieron nuevas fuentes de ingreso para financiar sus ambiciones militares y realmente constituyeron una de las razones fundamentales del éxito de Alfonso como monarca y comandante militar

Detecting mechanochemical atropisomerization within an STM break junction

We have employed the scanning tunneling microscope break-junction technique to investigate the single-molecule conductance of a family of 5,15-diaryl porphyrins bearing thioacetyl (SAc) or methylsulfide (SMe) binding groups at the ortho position of the phenyl rings (S2 compounds). These ortho substituents lead to two atropisomers, cis and trans, for each compound, which do not interconvert in solution under ambient conditions; even at high temperatures, isomerization takes several hours (half-life 15 h at 140 °C for SAc in C2Cl4D2). All the S2 compounds exhibit two conductance groups, and comparison with a monothiolated (S1) compound shows the higher group arises from a direct Au−porphyrin interaction. The lower conductance group is associated with the S-to-S pathway. When the binding group is SMe, the difference in junction length distribution reflects the difference in S−S distance (0.3 nm) between the two isomers. In the case of SAc, there are no significant differences between the plateau length distributions of the two isomers, and both show maximal stretching distances well exceeding their calculated junction lengths. Contact deformation accounts for part of the extra length, but the results indicate that cis-to-trans conversion takes place in the junction for the cis isomer. The barrier to atropisomerization is lower than the strength of the thiolate Au−S and Au−Au bonds, but higher than that of the Au−SMe bond, which explains why the strain in the junction only induces isomerization in the SAc compound

Single-layer MoS2 roughness and sliding friction quenching by interaction with atomically flat substrates

We experimentally study the surface roughness and the lateral friction force in single-layer MoS2 crystals deposited on different substrates: SiO2, mica, and hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN). Roughness and sliding friction measurements are performed by atomic force microscopy. We find a strong dependence of the MoS2 roughness on the underlying substrate material, being h-BN the substrate which better preserves the flatness of the MoS2 crystal. The lateral friction also lowers as the roughness decreases, and attains its lowest value for MoS2 flakes on h-BN substrates. However, it is still higher than for the surface of a bulk MoS2 crystal, which we attribute to the deformation of the flake due to competing tip-to-flake and flake-to-substrate interactions.J.Q., N.A., and G.R-B. gratefully acknowledge financial support by MICINN/MINECO (Spain) through program MAT2011-25046 and Comunidad de Madrid through program Nanobiomagnet S2009/MAT-1726. A.C-G. acknowledges financial support of the European Union Seventh Framework program through the FP7-Marie Curie Project PIEF-GA-2011-300802 (‘STRENGTHNANO’). info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/EC/FP7/30080

Enhancement and saturation of near-field radiative heat transfer in nanogaps between metallic surfaces

Near-field radiative heat transfer (NFRHT) between planar metallic surfaces was computationally explored over five decades ago by Polder and van Hove [Phys. Rev. B 4, 3303 (1971)]. These studies predicted that, as the gap size (d) between the surfaces decreased, the radiative heat flux first increases by several orders of magnitude until d is ∼ 100 nm after which the heat flux saturates. However, despite both the fundamental and practical importance of these predictions, the combined enhancement and saturation of NFRHT at small gaps in metallic surfaces remains experimentally unverified. Here, we probe NFRHT between planar metallic (Pt, Au) surfaces and show that RHT rates can exceed the far-field rate by over a thousand times when d is reduced to ∼ 25 nm. More importantly, we show that for small values of d RHT saturates due to the dominant contributions from transverse electric evanescent modes. Our results are in excellent agreement with the predictions of fluctuational electrodynamics and are expected to inform the development of technologies such as near-field thermophotovoltaics, radiative heat-assisted magnetic recording, and nanolithograph