If two sheets of graphene are stacked with a precise offset of 1.1° and cooled to 1.7 K, something stunning happens: The resistivity drops to zero. That observation of superconductivity, published in Nature concurrently with a session at the 2018 American Physical Society March Meeting, set off a flurry of excitement reminiscent of the “Woodstock of Physics”—the March 1987 APS event when high-temperature cuprate superconductors debuted.
Now, five years after the discovery of superconductivity in twisted bilayer graphene, experimentalists and theorists are still trying to unravel the mechanism behind the phenomenon. Recent demonstrations of superconductivity in three-, four- and even five-layer graphene raise intriguing new possible explanations. All the while, researchers are attempting to improve their techniques for assembling the finicky stacks of carbon.
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