Given its ability to become an insulator and a superconductor
just by varying the applied pressure, are Jahn-Teller metals qualify as a new
form of matter?
By: Ringo Bones
Back in May 12, 2015, researchers at Japan’s Tohoku
University are making a bold claim saying that they had discovered an entirely
new form of matter. The team led by Kosmas Prassides, says they’ve created what’s
called a Jahn-Teller metal by inserting atoms of rubidium – a strange alkali
metal more chemically reactive than pure metallic sodium – into buckyballs or
buckminsterfullerene, a pure carbon structure which has a spherical shape formed
from a series of interlocking polygons of carbon atoms. Buckyballs, which are
somewhat related to other carbon supermaterials like graphene and carbon
nanotubes, are already known for their superconductive capabilities. Here,
while combining buckyballs and rubidium, the researchers created a complex
crystalline structure that seemed to conduct, insulate and magnetize while
acting as a metal. It goes beyond what ordinary matter can do.
Jahn-Teller metals have recently created a buzz in the scientific
community because such esoteric form of matter could serve as a key to
understanding one of the biggest mysteries in physics that has baffled them
since the late 1980s – i.e. the phenomenon of high-temperature superconductivity.
Named after the Jahn-Teller Effect which is used in chemistry to describe how
at low pressures the geometric arrangement of molecules and ions in an
electronic state can become distorted. This new state of matter allows
scientists to transform an insulator – which can’t conduct electricity – into a
conductor by simply applying pressure.
Jahn-Teller Metals - new building blocks for an advanced high fidelity audio tweeter design?
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