Discovery of the one-way superconductor, thought to be impossibleAssociate professor Mazhar Ali and

Discovery of the one-way superconductor, thought to be impossibleAssociate professor Mazhar Ali and his research group at TU Delft have discovered one-way superconductivity without magnetic fields, something that was thought to be impossible ever since its discovery in 1911—up until now. The discovery, published in Nature, makes use of 2D quantum materials and paves the way toward superconducting computing. Superconductors can make electronics hundreds of times faster, all with zero energy loss. Ali: “If the 20th century was the century of semiconductors, the 21st can become the century of the superconductor.”During the 20th century, many scientists, including Nobel Prize winners, have puzzled over the nature of superconductivity, which was discovered by Dutch physicist Kamerlingh Onnes in 1911. In superconductors, a current goes through a wire without any resistance, which means inhibiting this current or even blocking it is hardly possible—let alone getting the current to flow only one way and not the other. That Ali’s group managed to make superconducting one-directional—necessary for computing—is remarkable: one can compare it to inventing a special type of ice which gives you zero friction when skating one way, but insurmountable friction the other way.Read more. -- source link

More pics about