Thinner Means Stronger: How Ultrathin Films Beat Magnetic Fields ⚡ экспресс
In ultra-thin superconductor films, the critical magnetic field shot up more than 10 times! The secret lies in a quantum effect that tweaks the magnetic properties of electrons, making the pairs tougher. It’s like dance partners holding on tighter when space is limited. Can we create superconductors that work in even stronger fields?
Superconductors are materials that transmit current without loss. In the 1950s, John Bardeen and his colleagues explained that electrons in them pair up, like dance partners. However, Wolfgang Pauli showed that a strong enough magnetic field, like a whirlwind, would tear the pair apart — this is the Pauli limit. But in layered PdTe₂, it's different. When rolled into a film just 19 nanometers thick, the electron pairs find themselves in a cramped room: there's no room to move, the bond strengthens, and you need a hurricane to pull them apart. In the experiment, such a film withstood a field 10 times stronger than a thicker one.
This discovery draws a thread from nanometer-thin films to galactic beacons, touching on the laws of the Standard Model and the concept of entropy in quantum systems.
🎯 A 19-nm-thick PdTe₂ film is five times thinner than the shell of the flu virus. Individual layers of this material can be peeled off with adhesive tape, paving the way for flexible superconducting electronics.