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Science

Twisted Graphene Could Power a New Generation of Superconducting Electronics (sciencemag.org) 27

sciencehabit shares a report from Science Magazine: In 2018, a group of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) pulled off a dazzling materials science magic trick. They stacked two microscopic cards of graphene -- sheets of carbon one atom thick -- and twisted one ever so slightly. Applying an electric field transformed the stack from a conductor to an insulator and then, suddenly, into a superconductor: a material that frictionlessly conducts electricity. Dozens of labs leapt into the newly born field of "twistronics," hoping to conjure up novel electronic devices without the hassles of fusing together chemically different materials. Two groups -- including the pioneering MIT group -- are now delivering on that promise by turning twisted graphene into working devices, including superconducting switches like those used in many quantum computers. The studies mark a crucial step for the material, which is already maturing into a basic science tool able to capture and control individual electrons and photons. Now, it is showing that it could one day be the basis of new electronic devices.
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Twisted Graphene Could Power a New Generation of Superconducting Electronics

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  • Superconductivity (Score:5, Informative)

    by Meneth ( 872868 ) on Friday November 20, 2020 @06:44AM (#60746084)
    Looks like it requires temperatures below 3 Kelvin. Links to two [arxiv.org] of the papers on Arxiv. [arxiv.org]
  • by ffkom ( 3519199 ) on Friday November 20, 2020 @07:31AM (#60746154)
    ... superconductors is? I'm missing a discussion of this in the article. I mean basic research on new materials is all great and fine, but when you claim "a new generation" then you should probably at least mention what is supposed to be the "generational leap".
    • GRAPHENE! That's the advantage - GRAPHENE! It's like back in 2015 everything had to be blockchain, and in 2011 everything had to be machine learning. Graphene is the new panacea to all of the world's ills, and so you must use it, even if ends up being worse than other solutions. Because GRAPHENE!
    • by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      ... superconductors is? I'm missing a discussion of this in the article. I mean basic research on new materials is all great and fine, but when you claim "a new generation" then you should probably at least mention what is supposed to be the "generational leap".

      Instead of requiring exotic materials and alloys, a graphene superconductor is made with sheets of carbon, a material that's a lot easier to obtain than Yttrium used in many superconductors. Especially since many homes and offices already have tons o

      • by ffkom ( 3519199 )
        Well, mundane lead is a superconductor below twice as much Kelvin as this twisted graphene. Ask a guy from 100 years ago which of these two materials he could more readily provide...
  • New and Improved with Twistphene
  • Are we talking light bondage twisted, maybe a riding crop, or are we talking strap 'em down, hooked to an air hose run to a septic tank grab the cattle prod twisted?

  • Like how many African elephants are needed to pull them apart, how many ballet shoe tip wide are these sheets, at how many furlongs per fortnight you need to pull, how many libraries of congress of data that can be transmitted, how many olympic swimming pools of waste created, how many foot ball fields etc etc
  • Researchers contacted M. Night Shyamalan to seek new methods of twisting the graphene.

  • from the article:

    Magic angle graphene devices are unlikely to challenge consumer silicon electronics anytime soon. Graphene itself is easy to make: Sheets of it can be stripped off blocks of graphite with nothing more than Scotch tape. But the devices must be chilled nearly to absolute zero before they can superconduct. And maintaining the precise twist is awkward, as the sheets tend to wrinkle, disrupting the magic angle. Reliably creating smoothly twisted sheets even just 1 micron or two across is still a challenge, and researchers don’t yet see a clear path toward mass production. “If you wanted to do a real complex device,” Jarillo-Herrero says, “you’d need to create hundreds of thousands of [graphene substrates] and that technology doesn’t exist.”

    Yes, this only works at absolute zero

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