SoylentNews

Phoenix666 [soylentnews.org] writes:

An international research team from Canada and Germany has been able to demonstrate that graphene can be made to behave as a superconductor when it’s doped with lithium atoms [ieee.org]. The researchers believe that this new property could lead to a new generation of superconducting nanoscale devices.

Superconductors are materials that conduct electricity without resistance and without dissipating energy. In ordinary materials, electrons repel each other, but in superconductors the electrons form pairs known as Cooper pairs, which together flow through the material without resistance. Phonons, the mechanism that facilitates these electrons’ alliances are vibrations in lattice crystalline structures.
...
In a research paper available on arXiv, the researchers demonstrated in physical experiments that the computer models were indeed correct in their predictions. Andrea Damascelli at the University of British Colombia in Vancouver, together with collaborators in Europe, grew layers of graphene on silicon-carbide substrates, then deposited lithium atoms onto the graphene in a vacuum at 8 K, creating a version of graphene known as “decorated” graphene.

Original Submission