Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Research news: Newly Discovered Fundamental State Of Matter, A Superinsulator, Has Been Created

The News:
Newly Discovered Fundamental State Of Matter, A Superinsulator, Has Been Created
ScienceDaily (Apr. 9, 2008) — Superinsulation may sound like a marketing gimmick for a drafty attic or winter coat. But it is actually a newly discovered fundamental state of matter created by scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory in collaboration with several European institutions. This discovery opens new directions of inquiry in condensed matter physics and breaks ground for a new generation of microelectronics.
Led by Argonne senior scientist Valerii Vinokur and Russian scientist Tatyana Baturina, an international team of scientists from Argonne, Germany, Russia and Belgium fashioned a thin film of titanium nitride which they then chilled to near absolute zero. When they tried to pass a current through the material, the researchers noticed that its resistance suddenly increased by a factor of 100,000 once the temperature dropped below a certain threshold. The same sudden change also occurred when the researchers decreased the external magnetic field. Read more...

The Research:
Read the research behind this story in the journal Nature.

No comments: