The department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory scientists recently discovered an exclusive 3-D racetrack for electrons in some very thin slices of a nanomaterial. The material was created by the team itself. They noticed how electrons rotated around a surface through major part of the material and raced back in opposite direction. The mere possibility of bringing up a “topological matter” that is capable of carrying some electrical charge over its surface without getting influenced by room temperature has turned into a point of great interest for a research community. The supreme goal of this research is to find out those materials that are capable of lossless conduction of some other types of materials without any freezing temperatures. In crux, they are looking forward to something that is a step ahead of superconductors. 

 

 

James Analytics, the staff scientist of this Lab who led this project says, “Microchips lose so much energy through heat dissipation that it’s a limiting factor. The smaller they become, the more they heat up.” The material they did their study on is a semimetal known as cadmium arsenide. It is known for exhibiting some quantum properties that cannot be explained by even the most classical laws of physics. It was the year 2014 when some scientists found out that cadmium arsenide has some common properties with graphene. Analytics further adds, “What’s exciting about these phenomena is that, in theory, they are not affected by temperature, and the fact they exist in three dimensions possibly makes fabrication of new devices easier.” 

 

The samples of cadmium arsenide exhibited a specific quantum property called “chirality” that integrates the most basic property of electrons spinning with its momentum. This development is the first step towards the basic goal of using chirality in the transportation of energy and charge through some material without any loss.