'Massless' Particle May Create Faster and More Efficient Electronics

First Posted: Jul 17, 2015 12:44 PM EDT

A "massless" particle could give rise to faster and more efficient electronics. Scientists have discovered a particle that has the unusual ability to behave as matter and antimatter inside a crystal.

The particle in question is called the Weyl fermion. This particular particle has long been sought by scientists since it's been regarded as a possible building block of other subatomic particles. These particles are even more basic than the negative-charge carrying electron.

"The physics of the Weyl fermion are so strange, there could be many things that arise from this particle that we're just not capable of imagining now," said Zahid Hasan, one of the researchers, in a news release.

The Weyl fermion possesses two characteristics that could make it suitable for future electronics. It's most notable for its ability to behave like a composite of monopole- and antimonopole-like particles when inside a crystal. This means that Weyl particles that have opposite magnetic-like charges can move independently of one another with a high degree of mobility.

The scientists also found that Weyl fermions can be used to create massless electrons that move very quickly with no backscattering. In electronics, backscattering hinders efficiency and generates heat. Weyl electrons simply move through and around roadblocks.

"The nature of this research and how it emerged is really different and more exciting than most of other work we have done before," said Su-Yang Xu, one of the researchers. "Usually, theorists tell us that some compound might show some new or interesting properties, then we as experimentalists grow that sample and perform experiments to test the prediction. In this case, we can up with the theoretical prediction ourselves and then performed the experiments. This makes the final success even more exciting and satisfying than before."

The findings are published in the journal Science.