Scientists capture image of bizarre 'electron ice' for the first time
By Ben Turner about 9 hours ago
The crystals show electrons pressed into a honeycomb-like 'material inside a material'
The scanning tunnelling image of the graphene sheet shows the honeycomb imprint of the 'electron ice' underneath it. (Image credit: H. Li et al./Nature)
Physicists have taken the first ever image of a Wigner crystal — a strange honeycomb-pattern material inside another material, made entirely out of electrons.
Hungarian physicist Eugene Wigner first theorized this crystal in 1934, but it's taken more than eight decades for scientists to finally get a direct look at the "electron ice." The fascinating first image shows electrons squished together into a tight, repeating pattern — like tiny blue butterfly wings, or pressings of an alien clover.
The researchers behind the study, published on Sept. 29 in the journal Nature, say that while this isn't the first time that a Wigner crystal has been plausibly created or even had its properties studied, the visual evidence they collected is the most emphatic proof of the material's existence yet.
"If you say you have an electron crystal, show me the crystal," study co-author Feng Wang, a physicist at the University of California, told Nature News.
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