Graphene is a special material. Among its many talents, it can act as a superconductor, generate a super-rare form of magnetism, and unlock entirely new quantum states.
Now graphene has another amazing credit: it can record levels of magnetoresistance without a need to push the temperature down towards absolute zero.
High magnetoresistance – a material's ability to change its electrical resistance in response to a magnetic field – is relatively rare, yet materials that can shift their properties in this fashion are useful in computers, cars, and medical equipment.
The most interesting graphene behavior, and indeed the highest levels of magnetoresistance, are usually observed at ultra-low temperatures.
In this latest experiment, researchers from the University of Manchester and the University of Lancaster in the UK exposed high-quality graphene to magnetic fields at room temperature and measured its response.
"Over the last 10 years, electronic quality of graphene devices has improved dramatically, and everyone seems to focus on finding new phenomena at low, liquid-helium temperatures, ignoring what happens under ambient conditions," says materials scientist Alexey Berdyugin from the University of Manchester.
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