Electrons that break the rules and move perpendicular to the
applied electric field could be the key to delivering next generation,
low-energy computers, a collaboration of scientists from The University of
Manchester and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have found.
In a research paper published this week in Science, the
collaboration led by MIT’s theory professor Leonid Levitov and Manchester’s
Nobel laureate Sir Andre Geim report a material in which electrons move at a
controllable angle to applied fields, similar to sailboats driven diagonally to
the wind.