September 13, 2014

New species of electrons can lead to better computing



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.