Korean scientists make groundbreaking discovery of electronic crystallites in solid material

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Korean scientists make groundbreaking discovery of electronic crystallites in solid material

Published: 17 Oct. 2024, 11:50

Atomic-scale electronic crystallites, which are blue balls arranged in a hexagon pattern and connected by white, wavy lines. [KIM GEUN-SU]

A group of Korean scientists has discovered electronic crystallites in a solid material for the first time ever, which is expected to help make progress in studies on high-temperature superconductivity, the science ministry said Thursday.

A research team, led by Professor Kim Keun-su at Yonsei University in Seoul, posted a paper, titled "Electronic rotons and Wigner crystallites in a two-dimensional dipole liquid," in Nature, a prominent science journal, according to the Ministry of Science and ICT.

This marks the world's first experimental discovery of the structure, theorized by Hungarian American physicist Eugene Wigner in 1934.

Wigner crystal refers to a solid or crystalline formation of a gas of electrons enabled by strong repulsion between electrons at low electron density. Normally, a crystal formation is understood as an attraction between atoms.

"Until now, scientists have had a dichotomous perception of electrons: those with order and those without order," Kim said. "But our research found a third type of electronic crystallites with short-range crystalline order."

The different phases of electrons, including an electronic crystallite in the middle [KIM GEUN-SU]

The discovery by Kim's team is expected to provide further clues to better understand high-temperature superconductivity and superfluidity, longstanding conundrums in modern day physics.

High-temperature superconductors, materials with critical temperature, are considered to have the potential for creating innovations in the energy, transportation and medical industries as they can be easily cooled with liquid nitrogen.

Superfluids are also known to have potential practical uses in health care, the electronics industry and others.

Kim said his team observed an electronic crystallite, with a size of 1 to 2 nanometers, while measuring the energy-momentum relation of electrons doped from alkali metals through angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy and the Advanced Light Source, a specialized particle accelerator at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in the United States.

Yonhap