Channeling valleytronics in graphene: Researchers discover 1-D conducting channels in bilayer graphene
Tuesday, May 5, 2015 - 06:30
in Physics & Chemistry
To the list of potential applications of graphene – a two-dimensional semiconductor of pure carbon that is stronger and much faster than silicon – we can now add valleytronics, the coding of data in the wavelike motion of electrons as they speed through a conductor. Berkeley Lab researchers have discovered topologically protected one-dimensional electron conducting channels at the domain walls of bilayer graphene. These conducting channels are "valley polarized," which means they can serve as filters for electron valley polarization in future devices such as quantum computers.