The latest research promises to advance quantum technology and open up new possibilities for superconductivity research.
Graphene was born in 2004, and since then it has attracted widespread attention and has been vigorously developed. Graphene is a new type of nanomaterial with the thinnest, highest strength and best electrical and thermal conductivity. With the deepening of the research, more features of it have surfaced one by one.
Bilayer twisted graphene—two atomic layers that are slightly twisted relative to each other has been the focus of research in recent years. A year ago, Klaus Ensling’s team at ETH Zurich’s Solid State Physics Laboratory demonstrated that twisted bilayer graphene can be used to make Josephson junctions, the fundamental building block of superconducting devices.
In the latest study, Enslin’s research team used twisted graphene to create the first superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) to demonstrate the interference of superconducting quasiparticles. Traditional SQUIDs are widely used in fields such as medicine, geology and archaeology. Their sensitive sensors can measure small changes in magnetic fields, but they only work with superconducting materials, so they need to be cooled with liquid helium or nitrogen.
The graphene SQUIDs developed are not as sensitive as conventional aluminum SQUIDs, and must also be cooled to 2°C above absolute zero, “but the latest research greatly broadens the application of graphene, which we have previously demonstrated can be used to manufacture Single-electron transistors, and now superconducting devices.” Enslin points out, “In quantum technology, SQUIDs can hold qubits and thus can be used as components to perform quantum operations. Also, transistors are typically made of silicon. , SQUIDs are made of aluminum, and different materials require different processing techniques, but now they can all be made from graphene.”
Enslin adds that there are different superconducting phases within graphene, but there is no theoretical model to explain them yet. The latest results will also open up new possibilities for superconductivity research, and with these components, perhaps a better understanding of how superconductivity in graphene arises.
Graphene has a series of remarkable properties: the thinnest material imaginable, the material with the largest specific surface area, the strongest material known to date, the most ductile and flexible crystal, and the thermal conductivity has also broken records . Since its inception, graphene has attracted great attention from scientists in the field of materials, and new research and development results have emerged one after another. But it has to be said that graphene has not been around for a long time, and the mass production and industrial application of graphene is still being explored. This is also why, although we can “occasionally encounter” some graphene products in the market, it is not common. Of course, these are difficult to cover up the huge application potential of graphene, and we still need to give it some more time.
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