Creating an electrical conduit using two insulators
Thursday, January 14, 2016 - 07:21
in Physics & Chemistry
Revolutionary new electronic devices, such as those required for next-generation computers, require new and novel material systems. Scientists at the University of Minnesota and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory showed that combining two oxide materials in one particular orientation gives rise to a densely packed sheet of highly mobile electrons. The sheet is created when bound electrons jump across the junction of a neodymium-based oxide, NdTiO3, to a material based on strontium, SrTiO3, and become free. The density of these electrons—the highest ever observed at the junction of two materials—paves the way for a new class of electronic devices.