Studying structure to understand function within ‘material families’

Carbon, silicon, germanium, tin and lead are all part of a family that share the same structure of their outermost electrons, yet range from acting as insulators to semiconductors to metals.Is it possible to understand these and other trends within element families? In a new article, researchers describe probing the relationship between the structure (arrangement of atoms) and function (physical properties) of a liquid metal form of the element bismuth.