HORIZON 2020 - Graphene supercurrents go ballistic

Researchers with Europe’s Graphene Flagship have demonstrated superconducting electric currents in the two-dimensional material graphene that bounce between sheet edges without scattering. This first direct observation of the ballistic mirroring of electron waves in a 2d system with supercurrents could lead to the use of graphene-based Josephson junctions in applications such as advanced digital logic circuits, ultrasensitive magnetometers and voltmeters.

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date: 12/08/2015

See also: Graphene Flagship

An international team of physicists led by Graphene Flagship member Lieven Vandersypen, who is based at the Kavli Institute of Nanoscience in Delft, demonstrate unambiguous signatures of Josephson junctions in graphene, a two-dimensional allotrope of carbon atoms arranged in a hexagonal lattice. In the paper, published in Nature Nanotechnology the lead authors, with amongst others Victor Calado and Srijit Goswami, look at ballistic supercurrents in graphene, with the electrons mirroring between one-dimensional edge contacts made of molybdenum-rhenium.Nature Nanotech. (2015); doi: 10.1038/NNANO.2015.156

Read full article - 27 July 2015 - written by Francis Sedgemore, the science writer of the Graphene Flagship