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finickydesert ,
@finickydesert@lemmy.ml avatar

Can anyone ELI5?

just_another_person ,

It will make Quantum Computers less complex, and solar cells thinner and more dense.

yamaonan OP ,

From what I gather, past insulator discoveries allowed electron flow in three or two dimensions, but this new discovery only allows flow in one dimension. I think of it like plumbing, where you have a tee, and the water (electrons) travel through the pipe in three directions (dimensions). Restricting the flow of electrons allows for better focus/flow, which makes for more precise electronic engineering methods.

An EE might be able to elaborate better than my crappy plumbing analogy.

catloaf ,

Sort of, yeah. As I read it, in a regular conductor, electrons move around on the surface basically however they want. But we developed a process where on a 2D conductor, like a piece of aluminum foil, we could get the electrons to only move along the edges. Now they’ve extended that where, by making helical (spiral spring-shaped) strands of tellurium, they can make the electrons flow directionally along those helices. There’s a pretty good illustration from the authors of the paper in the article.

If people say this is applicable to stuff like quantum computing and solar panels, I believe them, but I don’t know enough to say how or why.

some_guy ,

I gave up halfway because I’m just not gonna understand, but this is very exciting news - at least it appears to be.

lung ,
@lung@lemmy.world avatar

That’s the best kind of science article. No catchy headline & too complicated even in a summary

Dkarma ,

They built a chain of tellurium instead of a cube or a sheet of it and cut it using a new very accurate technique to be 1 atom wide chain. They verified the endpoints are cut cleanly with radio image microscopy I think.

myrrh ,

…ringworld, johnny mnemonic, and cube all taught me that monofilament is material to be feared…

paraphrand ,

You should check out The Three Body Problem too.

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