Two Indian-origin scientists have developed a new super-thin lightweight material which may lead to improved cellphone cameras and atomically thin transistors that could fuel computers.
The new material shows evidence of magnetic, optical, electrical and thermal properties, researchers said.
Northeastern University's physicists Swastik Kar and Srinivas Sridhar were working on imbuing graphene with thermal sensitivity for use in infrared imaging devices such as night-vision goggles for the military.
The researchers, however, ended up unearthing an entirely new material spun out of boron, nitrogen, carbon, and oxygen.
The pair was familiar with "alloys," controlled combinations of elements that resulted in materials with properties that surpassed graphene's - for example, the addition of boron and nitrogen to graphene's carbon to connote the conductivity necessary to produce an electrical insulator.
But no one had ever thought of choosing oxygen to add to the mix.
In fact, Kar and Sridhar spent a lot of time trying to get rid of the oxygen seeping into their brew, worried that it would contaminate the "pure" material they were seeking to develop.
"That's where the Aha! moment happened for us. We realised we could not ignore the role that oxygen plays in the way these elements mix together," said Kar, an assistant professor of physics in the College of Science.
"So instead of trying to remove oxygen, we thought: Let's control its introduction," added Sridhar, the Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor of Physics and director of Northeastern's Electronic Materials Research Institute.
Oxygen, it turned out, was behaving in the reaction chamber in a way the scientists had never anticipated: It was determining how the other elements - the boron, carbon, and nitrogen - combined in a solid, crystal form, while also inserting itself into the lattice.
The trace amounts of oxygen were, metaphorically, "etching away" some of the patches of carbon, said Kar, making room for the boron and nitrogen to fill the gaps.
"It was as if the oxygen was controlling the geometric structure," said Sridhar.
They named the new material 2D-BNCO, representing the four elements in the mix and the two-dimensionality of the super-thin lightweight material, and set about characterising and manufacturing it, to ensure it was both reproducible and scalable.
After each trial, they analysed the structure and the functional properties of the product - electrical, optical - using electron microscopes and spectroscopic tools.
Next they will examine the new material's mechanical properties and begin to experimentally validate the magnetic ones conferred by the intermingling of these four nonmagnetic elements.
In addition to Northeastern scientists, postdoctoral fellows, and graduate students, contributors included researchers in government, industry, and academia from the US, Mexico, and India.
