This discovery has the potential to fundamentally change the nature of these items.
The nanoscale electronic components found in devices such as smartphones are solid, static objects that, once designed and assembled, cannot transform into anything else. However, a physicist at the University of California, Irvine, reports the discovery of his device, which is nanoscale and capable of transforming into a variety of shapes and sizes, even though it is in the solid state.
This is a discovery that could fundamentally change not only the nature of electronic devices, but the way scientists study quantum matter at the atomic scale. This research was recently published in Science Advances.
“What we discovered is that for a particular set of materials, we can create nanoscale electronic devices that are not sticking together,” he said. can.”
Electronics are changeable like the magnets on your refrigerator door. Paste it, but you can reconfigure it into whatever pattern you like.
“The significance of this work is that it shows new properties available in these materials that enable fundamentally different types of device architectures, such as mechanical reconfiguration of parts of circuits.” Ian Sequeira, Ph.D. A student at the Yamagishi Sanchez Lab.
If it sounds like science fiction, it’s because scientists didn’t think it was possible until now, Sanchez-Yamagishi said.
In fact, Sanchez-Yamagishi and his team, including UCI Ph.D. student Andrew Barabas, weren’t looking for what they eventually discovered.
“It definitely wasn’t what we were trying to do in the first place,” said Sanchez Yamagishi. “We expected everything to be static, but we accidentally bumped into the device while trying to measure it and found it was moving.”
What they specifically saw was that tiny nanoscale gold wires could slide over special crystals called “van der Waals materials” with very low friction.
Taking advantage of these slippery interfaces, they created electronic devices made of single-atom-thick sheets of a substance called graphene attached to gold wires that could be transformed into a variety of different configurations on the fly. Did.
Gold is a common part of electronic components because it conducts electricity well.
However, it is unclear what impact this finding will have on the industry that uses such devices.
“The first story is about the basic science of it, an idea that could one day impact the industry,” said Sanchez Yamagishi. “This germinates that idea.”
Meanwhile, the team hopes their work could usher in a new era of quantum science research.
“It has the potential to fundamentally change the way people do research in this field,” said Sanchez Yamagishi.
“Researchers dream of achieving flexibility and control in their experiments, but there are many limitations when working with nanoscale materials,” he added. “Our results show that what was once thought to be fixed and static can be made flexible and dynamic.”
Original: Physicists at University of California, Irvine discover first transmutable nanoscale electronic device
Than: University of California, Irvine
