In insulators, by contrast, electrons cannot move and the materials ... The discoveries advance the fundamental understanding of condensed matter physics and may have implications for the development ...

(Courtesy: Wang et al.) Materials known as topological insulators have the unusual property of being able to conduct electricity on their surface even though they are insulators inside. If that ...

"This experimental system provides an excellent platform to pursue a plethora of exotic physics and novel device applications predicted for topological insulators," Chen said. For example, by further ...

Although this makes it difficult to picture the bulk physics of the 3D topological insulator (only the strong topological insulator will be discussed from this point), it is simple to picture its ...

“Because of the fundamental differences between fermions and bosons, whether a 3D bosonic photonic topological insulator could be realized was still an open question prior to our work,” he tells ...

Basically speaking, metals conduct electricity and insulators don’t. On the molecular level, that comes down to how freely electrons can move through the materials – in metals, electrons are ...

A new class of materials is poised to take condensed-matter physics by storm. Geoff Brumfiel looks at what is making topological insulators all the rage. For a brief time in Portland, Oregon ...

In contrast, QOs are usually absent for insulators due to the zero density of state in the gap. A team led by Dr. Yang Wei and Dr. Zhang Guangyu from the Institute of Physics of the Chinese ...

We wanted to show that these complex ideas in theoretical and experimental physics and chemistry are actually not as impossible to understand as you might initially think." Topological insulators ...