Why Twisted Graphene Is One of the Most Exciting Physics Stories of the Year
A Moiré pattern in twisted bilayer graphene.Image: NIST
Just a year ago, scientists presented results that seemed almost too good to be true: Carbon sheets only a single atom thick, called graphene, took on a pair of important physical properties when they were twisted at just the right “magic” angle relative to one another. “Fields that were relatively connected before are now joined studying this one type of material,” Pablo Jarillo-Herrero, MIT professor of physics and principal investigator behind last year’s twisted graphene papers, told Gizmodo. Jarillo-Herrero explained that it combines already-flourishing fields of physics, including those that study graphene and other two-dimensional materials, topological properties (characteristics that don’t change despite certain physical transformations), super-cold matter, and unusual electronic behaviors that come about from the way electrons are distributed in certain materials.
Source: gizmodo.com