{"id":101844,"date":"2020-02-03T16:44:10","date_gmt":"2020-02-04T00:44:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/02\/new-quantum-switch-turns-metals-into-insulators"},"modified":"2020-02-03T16:44:10","modified_gmt":"2020-02-04T00:44:10","slug":"new-quantum-switch-turns-metals-into-insulators","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/02\/new-quantum-switch-turns-metals-into-insulators","title":{"rendered":"New quantum switch turns metals into insulators"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/new-quantum-switch-turns-metals-into-insulators.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Most modern electronic devices rely on tiny, finely-tuned electrical currents to process and store information. These currents dictate how fast our computers run, how regularly our pacemakers tick and how securely our money is stored in the bank.<\/p>\n<p>In a study published in <i>Nature Physics<\/i>, researchers at the University of British Columbia have demonstrated an entirely new way to precisely control such electrical currents by leveraging the interaction between an electron\u2019s spin (which is the quantum <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/magnetic+field\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">magnetic field<\/a> it inherently carries) and its orbital rotation around the nucleus.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe have found a new way to switch the electrical conduction in materials from on to off,\u201d said lead author Berend Zwartsenberg, a Ph.D. student at UBC\u2019s Stewart Blusson Quantum Matter Institute (SBQMI). \u201cNot only does this exciting result extend our understanding of how electrical conduction works, it will help us further explore known properties such as conductivity, magnetism and superconductivity, and discover new ones that could be important for quantum computing, data storage and energy applications.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Most modern electronic devices rely on tiny, finely-tuned electrical currents to process and store information. These currents dictate how fast our computers run, how regularly our pacemakers tick and how securely our money is stored in the bank. In a study published in Nature Physics, researchers at the University of British Columbia have demonstrated an [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1523,1617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-101844","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-computing","category-quantum-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101844","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101844"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101844\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}