University of Tokyo and a group of Researches at RIKEN has demonstrated what is termed as a new material that would eliminate Electric Transmission line losses. This was a classic issue of Electric Transmission which was yet to be solved.
The Material which the scientists demonstrated was magnetic topological insulator, which is a highly exotic magnetic Semiconductor which was founded about 10 years back. This discovery is very important to the power industry as the power loss amount to nearly 10% of the total energy produced.
The work by the RIKEN/UT collaboration is closely related at a landmark discovery from the 1980s, the so-called quantum Hall effect. That effect is known to produce dissipationless electricity channels, but it requires large, cumbersome magnets to produce fields 100,000 larger than the earth's magnetic field for its operation. The RIKEN/UT collaboration circumvented this difficulty by using an exotic type of semiconductor predicted to exhibit a similar effect. In contrast to the quantum Hall effect, this effect, known as the quantum anomalous Hall effect, stems from the semiconductor's own magnetization rather than from an external one. At the heart of this new phenomenon is the interaction between magnetic ions and the topological insulator's current carrying particles (known as Dirac fermions), the latter of which are unique because they behave as if they have zero mass.
The devices produced by the RIKEN/UT team are a robust "proof of principle", demonstrating that this new type of dissipationless transport can be harnessed in prototype transistors. While currently requiring cryogenic conditions, improvements in materials design promises to improve the stability of the magnets, making it possible to operate them at higher temperatures. By doing away with external stimuli such as magnetic fields and, in the future, cryogenic cooling, these new magnetic topological insulators may represent the most efficient path to modernizing the power grid by eliminating loss in energy transfer.
The below figure demonstrates Depiction of quantum Hall effect (left) and quantum anomalous Hall effect (right).
The Material which the scientists demonstrated was magnetic topological insulator, which is a highly exotic magnetic Semiconductor which was founded about 10 years back. This discovery is very important to the power industry as the power loss amount to nearly 10% of the total energy produced.
The work by the RIKEN/UT collaboration is closely related at a landmark discovery from the 1980s, the so-called quantum Hall effect. That effect is known to produce dissipationless electricity channels, but it requires large, cumbersome magnets to produce fields 100,000 larger than the earth's magnetic field for its operation. The RIKEN/UT collaboration circumvented this difficulty by using an exotic type of semiconductor predicted to exhibit a similar effect. In contrast to the quantum Hall effect, this effect, known as the quantum anomalous Hall effect, stems from the semiconductor's own magnetization rather than from an external one. At the heart of this new phenomenon is the interaction between magnetic ions and the topological insulator's current carrying particles (known as Dirac fermions), the latter of which are unique because they behave as if they have zero mass.
The devices produced by the RIKEN/UT team are a robust "proof of principle", demonstrating that this new type of dissipationless transport can be harnessed in prototype transistors. While currently requiring cryogenic conditions, improvements in materials design promises to improve the stability of the magnets, making it possible to operate them at higher temperatures. By doing away with external stimuli such as magnetic fields and, in the future, cryogenic cooling, these new magnetic topological insulators may represent the most efficient path to modernizing the power grid by eliminating loss in energy transfer.
The below figure demonstrates Depiction of quantum Hall effect (left) and quantum anomalous Hall effect (right).
