Research by scientists attached to the EC's Graphene Flagship has revealed a superfluid phase in ultra-low temperature 2D materials, creating the potential for electronic devices which dissipate very little energy.
At the atomic and molecular scales, the world can be a very strange place, with everyday notions of temperature, energy and physical coherence thrown into disarray. With reality at the quantum level we must talk of statistical likelihood and probability rather than simple billiard ball cause and effect.
Take the concept of superfluidity, an ultra-cold state in which matter acts as a fluid with zero viscosity. You can think of superfluidity as a generalised thermodynamic analogue of the more commonly understood electrical superconductivity, whereby electrons move through materials without resistance and energy loss.
Superfluidity was first discovered in liquid helium, at temperatures of just a few degrees above absolute zero, but the phenomenon is evident at scales ranging from the atomic to the cosmic. It is related to the state of matter known as a Bose-Einstein condensate, in which a large fraction of the particles in bulk matter occupy the lowest quantum energy state. The particles, which at higher temperatures move around in a random, haphazard fashion, can in this way behave as a coherent or at least quasi-coherent whole, thus bringing quantum-mechanical effects into macroscopic visibility.
To read more, click here.