Looking only at their subatomic particles, most materials can be placed into one of two categories. Metals — like copper and iron — have free-flowing electrons that allow them to conduct electricity, ...

Researchers in the US have made the most convincing measurement yet of the bizarre electronic property that has earned topological insulators their recent fame. The team has shown that the electron ...

Fine tuning: a new theoretical framework for controlling a system’s properties using laser beams has been developed. (Courtesy: iStock/Swillklitch) Laser light could turn a normally insulating ...

But there are other, entirely different structural orders that deserve attention. In so-called Mott insulators for example, a class of materials now being intensively researched, the electrons ought ...

The components in a home audio/video system are pretty complicated to anyone without a good understanding of electronics; but wire–good, old-fashioned wire–is something we can all understand. It’s ...

A semiconductor is a material with electrical conductivity between that of a conductor (like copper) and an insulator (like glass). Unlike conductors, which allow electricity to flow freely, and ...

A semiconductor is a material or device that only conducts electricity under certain conditions. Some elements in the periodic table, such as carbon, silicon, and germanium, are intrinsic ...

Scientists are experimenting with narrow strips of graphene, called nanoribbons, in hopes of making cool new electronic devices, but University of California, Berkeley scientists have discovered ...

Scientists have harnessed an imaging technique to create a 3-D visualization of electrons moving at nearly light speed on and in a futuristic material that could replace silicon in electronic devices ...

The study takes a new approach to answer a long-standing mystery about insulator-to-metal transitions. Looking only at their subatomic particles, most materials can be placed into one of two ...

Over the past decades, computers have become faster and faster and hard disks and storage chips have reached enormous capacities. But this trend cannot continue forever: we are already running up ...