UpbeatSix sheets of carbon, stacked just so, keep inventing new quantum states
Graphene is a single layer of carbon atoms in a honeycomb pattern, famous for surprises. Researchers at Cornell University, Japan's National Institute for Materials Science and the Max Planck Institute in Germany studied six layers stacked in a shifted 'rhombohedral' pattern and found a tangle of unusual quantum states — including hints that some electrons freeze into a crystal while others keep flowing like a liquid beside them. The paper, published in Nature Physics, maps behaviour never seen in the better-known five-layer version.
The upbeat factorthe world's most studied material still has unexplored countries inside it — six atoms thick.
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