MIT physicist Pablo Jarillo-Herrero
has won a 2009 David and Lucile Packard Fellowship, an award he will use to
study a new class of materials that could have applications in the semiconductor
industry and quantum computing.
 | | Pablo Jarillo-Herrero (inset) has won a 2009 David and Lucile Packard Fellowship. The image here shows the crystallographic structure of graphene, a novel material that Jarillo-Herrero plans to study with his Packard grant. Images courtesy of Pablo Jarillo-Herrero |
The five-year, $875,000 grant will allow Jarillo-Herrero to explore the unique
features of graphene and a type of materials known as topological insulators,
whose electrons display unique behavior.
In most everyday materials, including metals and silicon, electrons behave
just like other particles with mass — for example, their velocity depends
on their energy.
Recently, scientists have discovered a new class of materials — including
graphene and topological insulators — whose electrons behave more like
massless particles such as neutrinos or photons rather than electrons. Electrons
in these materials are described by putting Albert Einstein's special relativity
and quantum mechanics together. "This grant is going to allow me to perform
experiments to characterize and explore the fascinating behavior of electrons
in these materials," says Jarillo-Herrero.
Graphene, a single layer sheet of carbon atoms arranged in a lattice, was discovered
in 2004, and the first known topological insulator, an alloy of bismuth and
antimony, was reported in 2007.
These new materials also exhibit high electron mobility, raising hopes that
they could lead to smaller, faster computer chips, potentially replacing silicon.
While graphene is a two-dimensional example of this kind of material, topological
insulators have three dimensions. A thin surface layer that exhibits the same
relativistic quantum behavior seen in graphene coats an insulating interior.
The electrons in the surface are insensitive to any impurities added to the
surface, making topological insulators potential candidates for quantum bits,
which could be used to build a robust quantum computer.
"You could, theoretically and hopefully experimentally, do quantum operations
not affected by the environment," says Jarillo-Herrero, who is one of 16
recipients of this year's Packard Fellowships.
The Packard grants are similar to the MacArthur Fellowships — also known
as "genius" grants — in that the funding is unrestricted: the
recipients may use it as they choose. But while the MacArthur grants are shrouded
in secrecy, the Packard fellows are nominated by the presidents of 50 universities
that participate in the Packard Fellowship program.
MIT alumni Kevin Janes PhD '05 and Peter Huybers SM '02, PhD '04 also won Packard
Fellowships this year.
Posted October 15th, 2009
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