Electronics rule our world, but electrons rule our electronics.
A research team at The Ohio State University has discovered a way to simplify how electronic devices use those electrons—using a material that can serve dual roles in electronics, where historically multiple materials have been necessary.
The team published its findings today, March 18, in the journal Nature Materials.
“We have essentially found a dual-personality material,” said Joseph Heremans, co-author of the study, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering and Ohio Eminent Scholar in Nanotechnology at Ohio State. “It is a concept that did not exist before.”
Their findings could mean a revamp of the way engineers create all different kinds of electronic devices. This includes everything from solar cells, to the light-emitting diodes in your television, to the transistors in your laptop, and to the light sensors in your smartphone camera.
Those devices are the building blocks of electricity: Each electron has a negative charge and can radiate or absorb energy depending on how it is manipulated. Holes—essentially, the absence of an electron—have a positive charge. Electronic devices work by moving electrons and holes—essentially conducting electricity.
But historically, each part of the electronic device could only act as electron-holder or a hole-holder, not both. That meant that electronics needed multiple layers—and multiple materials—to perform.
But the Ohio State researchers found a material—NaSn2As2, a crystal that can be both electron-holder and hole-holder—potentially eliminating the need for multiple layers.