Research by postdoctoral researcher Xi He, a former department Ph.D. student, was the subject of a Nature Letter in August 2016. Nature News & Views also featured the Letter as well as several other science news sources.
He and a team of Condensed Matter physicists at Brookhaven National Laboratory studied how copper oxide superconductors (cuprates) operate at temperatures much higher than traditional superconductors. They found that the temperature at which cuprates become semiconductors depends on the superfluid density (density of superconductive electrons), rather than the strength of electron pairing interactions as formerly believed.
This study is also a breakthrough in Condensed Matter physics because this type of copper oxide is hard to produce.
Original publication in Nature
Nature News & Views
Press releases by Brookhaven, Science Daily, Phys.Org, and Physik Journal
photo credit: Brookhaven National Laboratory
