2D Tin: World's First Material to Conduct Electricity with 100 Percent Efficiency

Tin could be the next super material. Theorists predict that a single layer of pure tin could be the world's first material to conduct electricity at room temperature with 100 percent efficiency.

In a new finding, researchers from the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University claim that the new material dubbed 'Stanene' is another single layer material similar to Grapheme with electrical properties that can be used in various applications.

Stanene is a mix of the Latin name for tin, stannum and the suffix of graphene. It can conduct electricity at temperatures that computer chips operate in.

"Stanene could increase the speed and lower the power needs of future generations of computer chips, if our prediction is confirmed by experiments that are underway in several laboratories around the world," team leader, Shoucheng Zhang, a physics professor at Stanford and the Stanford Institute for Materials and Energy Sciences (SIMES) said in a statement.

Prior to this, the research team was working towards predicting the electronic properties of the topological insulators. These special class of materials are known to conduct electricity only on the surface,  not in the interiors. The edges of these insulators conduct electricity with 100 percent efficiency when they are one atom thick.

"The magic of topological insulators is that by their very nature, they force electrons to move in defined lanes without any speed limit, like the German autobahn," Zhang said. "As long as they're on the freeway - the edges or surfaces - the electrons will travel without resistance."

Based on the calculation they noticed that a single layer of tin would be a topological insulator not just at room temperature but also above the given room temperature.

They claim that the first application of the stanene-fluorine mix could be used in wiring that links the sections of a microprocessor. Doing so will permit the free flow of the electrons. Above all they are confident that stanene wiring will lower the power consumption as well as the heat production of microprocessors.

But this is going to be a challenging task. One such challenge is to ensure that just one layer of pure tin is deposited and that layer has to be kept undamaged especially during the chip making process that is done in high temperature.

"Eventually, we can imagine stanene being used for many more circuit structures, including replacing silicon in the hearts of transistors," Zhang said. "Someday we might even call this area Tin Valley rather than Silicon Valley."

The findings were published in Physical Review.