Physicists discover new state of matter

MONTREAL (UPI) -- Canadian physicists say they have discovered a previously unknown state of matter that could have a "momentous" impact on creation of new electronic devices.

McGill University researchers say the new state of matter, a quasi-three- dimensional electron crystal, is a material very much like those used in the fabrication of modern transistors.

Working with one of the purest semiconductor materials ever made, they discovered the crystal in a device cooled at ultra-low temperatures roughly 100 times colder than intergalactic space. The material was then exposed to the most powerful continuous magnetic fields generated onEarth.

The resulting startling transformation of the two-dimensional electron system inside the semiconducting material into a quasi-three-dimensional system was something existing theory did not predict, the scientists said.

"It's actually not quite 3-D, it's an in-between state, a totally new phenomenon," said Guillaume Gervais, director of McGill's Ultra-Low Temperature Condensed Matter Experiment Lab. "This is the kind of thing the theoreticians love. Now they're scratching their heads and trying to fine-tune their models."

The researchers' findings appear in the journal Nature Physics.

Copyright 2008 by United Press International
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