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Excerpt from www.iflscience.com
Graphene is a very weird material. It’s a single layer of carbon atoms organized in a honeycomb lattice. It has incredible strength and can conduct heat and electricity in a record-breaking way. The conductivity is based on the fact that electrons in the material behave like a viscous liquid. And like in any liquid, vortices can form.
However, believing that something should happen and seeing it is a whole different thing. Researchers had to use a high-resolution magnetic field sensor. This device allowed them to track the behavior of electrons. The vortices are usually best seen at extremely low temperatures but the device was good enough to spot them even at normal room temperature. Researchers had never seen these electron vortices in graphene before.
Observing the vortices meant observing the movement of the electrons in a detailed way. They tracked the tiny magnetic fields that the electrons flowing in graphene produce.
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