Physicists at MIT have created an entirely new superconducting material with astonishing properties. The idea: a material with wavy layers of atoms, billions of a meter thick, that could be twisted to repeat over and over at chessboard distance, creating immense swaths of atom-crystal. Scientists think such a finding could help identify other materials with unique properties.
What Atomic-Scaled Wonders Lie Dormant?
The curious structure of the new material is what makes it so special. Instead of being a traditional crystal, the material has thousands of effectively uniform yet slightly corrugated layers resembling wrinkles in a giant waving sheet.
As stated by the researchers, a difference in size and structure among each layer of single atomic also cause these wave like by shape. These two layers, each comprising tantalum and sulfur, respectively and one layer combining strontium/tantalum/sulfur buckles into the other. Like lying a piece of legal paper on top of standard printer paper, The legal size has to be bent since the sample is too big.
These tiny oscillations are what give the material its interesting features, including the potential to become superconducting at a particular temperature. In such a state, electricity can find no resistance in the material. The superconductivity even appears to depend on the wave-like structure in certain places: some regions exhibit a stronger superconductivity than others.
Taming the Metal Wilderness
As well as novel superconductor nature, this new material also exhibits strange metallic behaviour. This occurs because electrons flow down the ‘troughs’ of the waves, or valleys, much more easily than they do flowing up and over the hills.
So what we have done now is added directionality for the electrons. It’s much more natural for them to flow in this direction than the other way around,” says Aravind Devarakonda, an assistant professor of chemical and biological engineering at Columbia University and the first author of the study.
This anisotropy of electron flow is quite striking, and the ability to control electrons that precisely represents atomic-scale engineering. With this step-like/ wave-like type of structure, as they have created a new pathway for the electrons which has been altered the metallic properties of material.
The team claims this discovery could unlock a treasure trove in material science and condensed matter physics. Through their discovery of how this wave-like structure affects the properties of the material, they can begin to investigate potential uses.
Conclusion
This new material is a novel development in the arena of materials science, where it comprise wavelike structure. This reflects the brilliance of material science advocated by these researchers to the extent that we can now control electron behavior at a close to atomic scale, and in turn, realize unusual types of superconducting and metallic properties. Such discovery will not just enrich our understanding of quantum magic; it may have consequences for creating the even more exotic materials that possess newfound capabilities. It is an uncharted space for the team and one could only hope that this inspires the next wave of applications and scientific breakthroughs.
