Researchers have uncovered new evidence that superconductivity can be steered by a material’s surroundings, opening a potential path toward electronics that waste far less energy. Instead of changing the material itself, the team showed that subtle environmental tuning can reshape how electrons behave at a fundamental level.
Superconductivity allows certain materials to carry electrical current with zero resistance once cooled below a critical temperature. This eliminates energy loss as heat, a limitation that affects everything from power grids to microchips. Yet the microscopic processes that enable this frictionless flow remain one of the biggest open questions in condensed matter physics.
New research, led by Chun Ning (Jeanie) Lau, a professor of physics at The Ohio State University, focused on a carefully designed material known as twisted bilayer graphene. This structure is made by stacking two layers of carbon and rotating one slightly relative to the other.
The team placed this material on a synthetic substrate called strontium titanate, which allowed them to monitor and adjust how electrons, the tiny particles responsible for electrical behavior, interact. These interactions occur in pairs and play a key role in determining properties such as magnetism and chemical bonding. By tuning these paired interactions, the researchers were able to turn superconductivity on and off.
“Electrons normally repel each other, but in superconductors they form pairs; this pair formation is the key to a superconductor’s ability to conduct electricity without dissipation,” said Lau. “Our evidence suggests that electrons themselves, depending on their sensitivity to their nearby environment, are unexpectedly important for material changes.”
To read more, click here.