Hopes surface for exotic insulator
Hopes surface for exotic insulator
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作者：
E. Reich
当理论家在2005年提出有可能找到在样品表面导电而其余部分表现为绝缘体的材料时，物理学家很感兴趣。他们想要研究在这种材料中应该出现的量子效应，并探索在低功耗电子和量子计算中的应用。但事实证明，这种材料被称为拓扑绝缘体，制造起来极其困难。一些研究人员一直在努力使用复杂的技术来生产薄膜，而这些技术不太可能达到工业生产所需的水平。另一些人则满足于制造接近拓扑绝缘体的化合物，但仍具有一定程度的内部导电性。现在，有三篇论文1、2、3表明，六硼化钐实际上可能是一种拓扑绝缘体。1969年，新泽西州贝尔实验室的研究人员首次发现，六硼化钐是一种鲜为人知的化合物，可以在极低的温度下获得导电性能。
When theorists proposed in 2005 that it should be possible to find materials that conduct electricity at the surface while the rest of the sample behaves as an insulator, physicists were intrigued. They wanted to study the quantum effects that should emerge in such materials, and to explore applications in low-power electronics and quantum computing. But topological insulators, as the materials were called, proved fiendishly difficult to make. Some researchers have slaved to produce thin films using complex techniques that are unlikely ever to scale up to the levels needed for industrial purposes. Others have contented themselves with compounds that approximate topological insulators but still have a degree of internal conductivity.Now, three papers 1, 2, 3 suggest that samarium hexaboride, a poorly understood compound that was first found to gain conducting properties at very low temperatures 4 in 1969 by researchers at Bell Labs in New Jersey, may in fact be a topological insulator in its bulk form.