Wonder Material Graphene Just Broke Another Major Record in Physics




Graphene is a unique substance. Among its various abilities, it can produce a super-rare kind of magnetism, operate as a superconductor, and open up completely new quantum states.

Another incredible feature of graphene is that it can measure magnetoresistance levels without requiring temperatures to drop below absolute zero.

While being relatively uncommon, materials with high magnetoresistance—the capacity to alter its electrical resistance in reaction to a magnetic field—are helpful in computers, automobiles, and medical equipment.

Ultra-low temperatures often provide the most intriguing graphene behavior and, in fact, the greatest amounts of magnetoresistance.

In this most recent experiment, scientists from the Universities of Manchester and Lancaster in the United Kingdom subjected premium graphene to magnetic fields at room temperature and evaluated its reaction.

According to materials scientist Alexey Berdyugin from the University of Manchester, "Over the last ten years, electronic quality of graphene devices has improved dramatically, and everyone seems to focus on finding new phenomena at low, liquid-helium temperatures, ignoring what happens under ambient conditions."

As we increased the temperature, a wide range of unanticipated occurrences appeared.

To ensure that only temperature might affect graphene's conductivity, the researchers employed a pure and unaltered version of the material. By jumping about, charged particles that are excited by a rise in temperature reveal gaps or "holes" in the material.

The heated graphene had a magnetoresistance response more than 100% when subjected to conventional permanent magnets, breaking the previous record for any material. To put that reaction into perspective, most metals and semiconductors barely vary their electrical resistance by a tiny fraction of 1% at ambient temperature and under actual magnetic fields.

According to the researchers, it depends on the mobility and equilibrium of the negatively charged electrons and the positively charged holes left behind when the electrons travel.

According to scientist Leonid Ponomarenko of Lancaster University in the UK, "Undoped high-quality graphene at room temperature gives a chance to investigate a totally new regime that in theory might have been discovered even a decade ago but was somehow neglected by everyone."

We intend to investigate this strange-metal domain, and inevitably, other intriguing findings, occurrences, and applications will come.

The experiment had another intriguing result, too. The undamaged graphene transformed into an unidentified sort of substance known as a "weird metal" as the temperature rose.

What we do know about these metals is that they behave in unexpected ways, and graphene was no exception in this case. The connection between temperature and electrical resistance, in particular, is different from what is seen in typical metals.

Although the discovery has no obvious applications in the real world, it considerably advances our knowledge of how materials and their physics function. It also highlights how unique and useful graphene is.

Scientist Andre Geim from the University of Manchester says, "Those working on graphene like myself always believed that this goldmine of physics should have been drained long ago."

"The material continues to contradict us, appearing in yet another form. Today I must one more declare that graphene is extinct and long live graphene.


The research has been published in Nature.