Scientists report the discovery of a new and unusual behavior in a unique variety of layered graphene, which they say reveals a previously unknown “transdimensional” category of material behavior.
The breakthrough discovery involves the anomalous Hall effect, a quirk of physics in which electricity can bend sideways in a material due to its internal magnetic properties.
Normally, this unusual phenomenon behaves fairly predictably, at least in terms of expectations based on factors that include whether the material is effectively two-dimensional or three-dimensional.
However, according to a recent study, researchers have discovered a new version of this effect that only appears in graphene layers of a certain thickness of just a few nanometers. At such scales, the researchers behind the discovery found that the material behaves in what they liken to being a sort of “in-between” state, which is neither fully two nor three-dimensional—hence it is effectively “transdimensional.”
According to the researchers, who report their findings in the journal Nature, this odd behavior allows electrons to move in coordinated ways both within the layers, as well as between them, resulting in far more complicated magnetic and electrical behavior than has previously been documented.
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