Bringing the promise of a new base of electronic equipment, researchers from MIT and the giants Google and IBM were able to transform twisted graphene into functional devices, including superconducting switches like those used in various quantum machines.
The achievement continues studies in 2018, the year in which scientists piled 2 microscopic letters of carbon sheets with an atom of thickness and twisted them slightly. Then they applied an electric field to the project and then saw the “magic” happen.
The novelty has everything to become a tool through which it is possible to capture and control individual electrons and photons. “The idea that this platform can be used as a universal material is not fantasy and is becoming a fact,” says Cory Dean, a physicist at Columbia University, whose laboratory was one of the first to confirm the superconducting properties of the experiment.
One of the secrets is the so-called “magic angle”, since turning the leaves in a specific way (1.1 °) causes thousands of atoms to act in unison, in a collective behavior that allows a radical change of manifestation and causing that the set goes from insulator to conductor and, finally, to superconductor. In addition, such interactions force electrons to slow down and “feel” each other’s presences, which quickly aligns them with the required requirements.
With the discovery, it is possible to insert desired properties in small regions of the leaves and create a kind of “gate” between them, subjecting them to varied electric fields. “Once exhibited, the world opened up,” celebrated Klaus Ensslin, a physicist at ETH Zurich and co-author of one of the studies.
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