A new remedy has been found to tackle the difficulty of controlling layered nanomaterials. Control can be improved by simply bending the material. The mechanism1 was observed by Academy Research Fellow Pekka Koskinen from the Nanoscience Center of the University of Jyvskyl together with his colleagues from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in the US. Bending decreases interaction between layers, making the material merely a stack of independent atomic layers.The group investigated the van der Waals nanomaterials which consist of stacked and loosely bound two-dimensional atomic layers. It is experimentally difficult to control the number of layers in the stacks -- and each layer may affect the electric and optical properties of the material dramatically.- Its as if the apparent color of a stack of papers would change wildly while adding or removing individual sheets, Pekka Koskinen illustrates2 the situation using a fictitious3（虛構的） example.Bending effectively detaches the layers from each other. The mechanism was observed while investigating layered molybdenum disulphide but it is expected to be valid4 for the van der Waals materials in general. The results were published in the journal Physical Review Letters.According to Koskinen, the observation advances research in nanoelectronics and optoelectronics because it markedly simplifies the interpretation5 and understanding of the electronic and optical properties of layered materials. The research was computational and the found mechanism is still a prediction.In nanoscience, experimental and theoretical research advance side by side. This time the prediction came first, and now we eagerly await for an experimental /confirm/iation, Koskinen says.The research was funded by the Academy of Finland and used the computational resources of the Finnish IT Center for Science .

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1 mechanism n.機械裝置；機構，結構 參考例句： The bones and muscles are parts of the mechanism of the body.骨骼和肌肉是人體的組成部件。 The mechanism of the machine is very complicated.這臺機器的結構是很復雜的。