Traditional Japanese basket-weaving techniques incorporate a pattern known as kagome, which consists of interlaced, symmetrical triangles arranged in a lattice.
Physicists have been fascinated by this pattern for decades, hypothesizing that if the atoms of a metal or other conductive substance could be arranged in such a pattern, the resulting material would likely display exotic electronic properties.
Now, scientists from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Harvard University and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have announced the creation of an exotic new material known as kagome metal—an electrically conductive crystal consisting of layers of iron and tin atoms arranged in a kagome lattice pattern. The new material is described in a study published in the journal Nature.
When the researchers passed an electric current across the atomic layers in the crystal, the current behaved in very unusual ways. Instead of the electrons in the current flowing straight through the lattice as expected, they bent into tight circular paths and flowed along the edges without losing energy.
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