Team develops graphene-based nanoelectronics platform
Dec 2022, phys.org
In metals, electric currents are carried by negatively charged electrons. But contrary to the researchers' expectations, their measurements suggested that the edge currents were not carried by electrons or by holes (a term for positive quasiparticles indicating the absence of an electron). Rather, the currents were carried by a highly unusual quasiparticle that has no charge and no energy, and yet moves without resistance. The components of the hybrid quasiparticle were observed to travel on opposite sides of the graphene's edges, despite being a single object.The unique properties indicate that the quasiparticle might be one that physicists have been hoping to exploit for decades — the elusive Majorana fermion predicted by Italian theoretical physicist Ettore Majorana in 1937."Developing electronics using this new quasiparticle in seamlessly interconnected graphene networks is game changing," de Heer said.
via Georgia Institute of Technology: Vladimir S. Prudkovskiy et al, An epitaxial graphene platform for zero-energy edge state nanoelectronics, Nature Communications (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-34369-4
Image credit: Anatoly Fomenko
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