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MIT physicists turn pencil lead into “gold”

MIT physicists have metaphorically turned graphite, or pencil lead, into gold by isolating five ultrathin flakes stacked in a specific order. The resulting material can then be tuned to exhibit three important properties never before seen in natural graphite. “It is...

From a five-layer graphene sandwich, a rare electronic state emerges

Ordinary pencil lead holds extraordinary properties when shaved down to layers as thin as an atom. A single, atom-thin sheet of graphite, known as graphene, is just a tiny fraction of the width of a human hair. Under a microscope, the material resembles a chicken-wire...

Physicists coax superconductivity and more from quasicrystals

In research that could jump-start interest into an enigmatic class of materials known as quasicrystals, MIT scientists and colleagues have discovered a relatively simple, flexible way to create new atomically thin versions that can be tuned for important phenomena. In...

Energy-harvesting design aims to turn high-frequency electromagnetic waves into usable power

Note: This story was updated on Dec. 18 to clarify that Wi-Fi signals are in the microwave frequency range, not terahertz, as originally reported. The device described in the article would convert energy in a range of electromagnetic frequencies, including terahertz...