Moore Foundation grantees at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have created a quantum device consisting of two layers of graphene stacked with a twist between the layers.
Graphene is a single-atom-layer thick sheet of carbon with remarkable electronic properties, such as very high electrical conductivity, making this exciting material a possible successor to silicon.
This twist allows the electrons and "holes" (missing electrons in a semiconductor, or a vacancy) in graphene to be separated using an electrical field. Such separation is critical for improving efficiency in devices such as solar cells.
Led by foundation grantees Raymond Ashoori and Pablo Jarillo-Herrero, the MIT team is part of an active community of scientists exploring quantum and artificial materials. Along with graphene, these researchers are studying the electrical and optical properties of other atomically thin materials such as transition metal dichalcogenides and topological insulators.
"There are many materials similar in spirit to graphene, meaning they can be obtained in atomically thin dimensions," said Jarillo-Herrero, who is a Experimental Investigator in Quantum Materials through the foundation's EPiQS initiative. "We’re just playing with all of them, and combining them into interesting structures. The properties of those materials are hard to predict and unexpected. And that’s exciting."
Read the article in Nature Nanotechnology and read a recent profile of Jarillo-Herrero here.
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