Yanjun Li

Heat and electricity usually go hand in hand, but making heat turn into current is no easy task. The material GdTe3, a layered crystal with a metallic sheen, when cooled to 20 kelvins (that's −253 °C) and placed in a strong 13.5-tesla magnetic field, showed something unexpected: its ability to generate electricity from heat shot up by 1075%.

Cooking a complex dish requires a clear recipe: first chop, then sauté, add spices at just the right moment. Chemical transformations also follow step-by-step recipes — mechanisms where atoms of carbon and hydrogen rearrange in a strict order. Previously, neural networks often invented nonexistent steps, like a whimsical cook swapping salt for sugar.