Scientists have long sought to make semiconductors—vital components in computer chips and solar cells—that are also superconducting, thereby enhancing their speed and energy efficiency and enabling new quantum technologies. However, achieving superconductivity in semiconductor materials such as silicon and germanium has proved challenging due to difficulty in maintaining an optimal atomic structure with the desired conduction behavior.
In a paper published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, an international team of scientists reports producing a form of germanium that is superconducting—able to conduct electricity with zero resistance, which allows currents to flow indefinitely without energy loss, resulting in greater operational speed that requires less energy.
"Establishing superconductivity in germanium, which is already widely used in computer chips and fiber optics, can potentially revolutionize scores of consumer products and industrial technologies," says New York University physicist Javad Shabani, director of NYU's Center of Quantum Information Physics and the university's newly established Quantum Institute, one of the paper's authors.
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