Study: Superconductivity switches on and off in 'magic-angle' graphene - Phys.org

With some careful twisting and stacking, MIT physicists have revealed a new and exotic property in "magic-angle" graphene: superconductivity that can be turned on and off with an electric pulse, much like a light switch.

The discovery could lead to ultrafast, energy-efficient superconducting transistors for neuromorphic devices—electronics designed to operate in a way similar to the rapid on/off firing of neurons in the human brain.

Magic-angle graphene refers to a very particular stacking of graphene—an atom-thin material made from carbon atoms that are linked in a hexagonal pattern resembling chicken wire.

That discovery gave rise to "twistronics," a field that explores how certain electronic properties emerge from the twisting and layering of two-dimensional materials.

His MIT co-authors are lead author Dahlia Klein, Li-Qiao Xia, and David MacNeill, along with Kenji Watanabe and Takashi Taniguchi of the National Institute for Materials Science in Japan.

They found, as others have, that the twisted bilayer graphene switched electronic states, changing between insulating, conducting, and superconducting statesat certain known voltages.