If you’ve ever wondered what superconductors, donuts, and green electronics have in common, then you’re unusually imaginative — but the answer comes in the form of a paper recently published in Nature by Don Heiman, Professor of Physics at Northeastern University, who participated in work making topological insulators more feasible for use in everything from iPhones to quantum computing.
As well as a professor, Heiman is a fellow of the American Physical Society and the director of the Nanomaterials Instrument Facility. He explains what makes topological insulators unique by comparing them to a glazed donut. “It’s as if, when you sliced the donut open, there was still glaze on the new surfaces,” he explains. In the context of the topological insulators Heiman worked with, this simply means that when the ‘donut’ of the insulator is sliced, the new surfaces become conducting. ‘Topological’ refers to this effect on the surface; ‘insulator’ to the material not being electrically conducting.
