Subscribe free to our newsletters via your
. 24/7 Space News .




CHIP TECH
Layered 2D crystals might enable superconductors at high temps
by Staff Writers
San Diego CA (SPX) Jul 29, 2014


Illustration only.

An elusive state of matter called superconductivity could be realized in stacks of sheetlike crystals just a few atoms thick, a trio of physicists has determined.

Superconductivity, the flow of electrical current without resistance, is usually found in materials chilled to the most frigid temperatures, which is impractical for most applications. It's been observed at higher temperatures-higher being about 100 kelvin or minus 280 degrees below zero Fahrenheit-in copper oxide materials called cuprate superconductors. But those materials are brittle and unsuitable for fabricating devices like circuits.

In a paper published in Nature Communications, Michael Fogler and Leonid Butov, professors of physics at the University of California, San Diego, and Konstantin Novoselov, Nobel laureate in physics and professor at the University of Manchester, propose a design for an artificially structured material that should support superconductivity at temperatures rivaling those seen for cuprates.

They considered a material made by interleaving two different types of crystal, one a semiconductor compound and the other a type of insulator. Two one-atom thick layers of the semiconductor compound molybdenum disulfide would be separated by a few-atom thick spacer made of boron nitride, and surrounded by additional boron nitride cladding.

This sets up a situation in which electrons and "holes" left by a missing electrons would accumulate in separate layers of the semiconductor compound in response to an electrical field. And yet these separated electrons and holes would be bound, at a distance, in states called indirect excitons.

These indirect excitons would form a gas with vanishing viscosity. That is, below a certain temperature, the gas would become superfluid. The physicists determined that superfluidity of indirect excitons would set up countercurrents that would not dissipate, a phenomenon called counterflow superconductivity.

Superfluidity and superconductivity are macroscopic manifestations of quantum phenomena, which are usually seen at the smallest physical scales.

The proposed design is an initial blueprint, the authors write. Their analysis reveals a general principle for creating "coherent states" like superfluidity and superconductivity that would emerge in similar materials created with layers of other semiconductor compounds such as tungsten disulfide or tungsten diselenide as well.

Such van der Waals structures are the subject of many investigations; this new analysis demonstrates that they also provide a new platform for exploring fundamental quantum phenomena.

Practical uses are possible as well; these materials could be used to develop electronic and optoelectronic circuits.

.


Related Links
University of California - San Diego
Computer Chip Architecture, Technology and Manufacture
Nano Technology News From SpaceMart.com






Comment on this article via your Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, Hotmail login.

Share this article via these popular social media networks
del.icio.usdel.icio.us DiggDigg RedditReddit GoogleGoogle




Memory Foam Mattress Review
Newsletters :: SpaceDaily :: SpaceWar :: TerraDaily :: Energy Daily
XML Feeds :: Space News :: Earth News :: War News :: Solar Energy News





CHIP TECH
Moore's Law Gets Boost With Fundamental Chemistry Finding
Berkeley CA (SPX) Jul 16, 2014
Over the years, computer chips have gotten smaller thanks to advances in materials science and manufacturing technologies. This march of progress, the doubling of transistors on a microprocessor roughly every two years, is called Moore's Law. But there's one component of the chip-making process in need of an overhaul if Moore's law is to continue: the chemical mixture called photoresist. Similar ... read more


CHIP TECH
China's biggest moon challenge: returning to earth

Lunar Pits Could Shelter Astronauts, Reveal Details of How 'Man in the Moon' Formed

Manned mission to Moon scheduled by Roscosmos for 2020-2031

Landsat Looks to the Moon

CHIP TECH
NASA Seeks Proposals for Commercial Mars Data Relay Satellites

Emirates paves way for Middle East space program with mission to Mars

Curiosity's images show Earth-like soils on Mars

India could return to Mars as early as 2017

CHIP TECH
Sierra Nevada Completes Major Dream Chaser NASA CCiCap Milestone

NASA Partners Punctuate Summer with Spacecraft Development Advances

Voyager Spacecraft Might Not Have Reached Interstellar Space

New Fort Knox: A means to a solar-system-wide economy

CHIP TECH
China to launch HD observation satellite this year

Lunar rock collisions behind Yutu damage

China's Fast Track To Circumlunar Mission

Chinese moon rover designer shooting for Mars

CHIP TECH
Russian Cargo Craft Launches for 6-Hour Trek to ISS

ISS Crew Opens Cargo Ship Hatch, Preps for CubeSat Deployment

Russian cargo craft docks with ISS, science satellite fails

ATV-5: loaded and locked

CHIP TECH
China to launch satellite for Venezuela

SpaceX Soft Lands Falcon 9 Rocket First Stage

SpaceX Falcon 9 v1.1 Flights Deemed Successful

ISS 'space truck' launch postponed: Arianespace

CHIP TECH
'Challenges' in quest to find water on Earth-like worlds: study

Transiting Exoplanet with Longest Known Year

Brown Dwarfs May Wreak Havoc on Orbits of Nearby Planets

NASA Mission To Reap Bonanza of Earth-sized Planets

CHIP TECH
Laser experiment reveals liquid-like motion of atoms in an ultra-cold cluster

Amazon launches 3D printing store

Carbyne morphs when stretched

Diode laser strong enough to cut metal developed by former MIT scientists




The content herein, unless otherwise known to be public domain, are Copyright 1995-2014 - Space Media Network. All websites are published in Australia and are solely subject to Australian law and governed by Fair Use principals for news reporting and research purposes. AFP, UPI and IANS news wire stories are copyright Agence France-Presse, United Press International and Indo-Asia News Service. ESA news reports are copyright European Space Agency. All NASA sourced material is public domain. Additional copyrights may apply in whole or part to other bona fide parties. Advertising does not imply endorsement, agreement or approval of any opinions, statements or information provided by Space Media Network on any Web page published or hosted by Space Media Network. Privacy Statement All images and articles appearing on Space Media Network have been edited or digitally altered in some way. Any requests to remove copyright material will be acted upon in a timely and appropriate manner. Any attempt to extort money from Space Media Network will be ignored and reported to Australian Law Enforcement Agencies as a potential case of financial fraud involving the use of a telephonic carriage device or postal service.