In materials science labs around the world, researchers regularly reproduce a peculiar experiment. Under a microscope, they use tiny robotic manipulators to lay two sheets of carbon, each a single atom thick, against one another. They then rotate the top sheet against the bottom. The two identical lattices of atoms, when twisted relative to one another, bloom into a complex moiré pattern, a shifting complex of honeycomb shapes that grow and shrink as the angle between the layers changes.
A landmark study, published by MIT researchers in 2018, showed that when the top layer is rotated to the so-called "magic angle" of 1.1 degrees and cooled to near absolute zero, the material can become superconducting, a state in which electrons flow freely through the material with no resistance. The discovery ignited hopes of future breakthroughs in superconducting materials, which could help create extremely efficient computers, power grids and new quantum devices.
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