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Melted electronic crystal

26.12.2016

A group of physicists from MIT and Princeton experimentally confirmed the ability of electrons to form a Wigner crystal - to line up in spatially ordered structures inside a semiconductor, and for the first time observed the melting of a crystal with increasing electron density.

A crystal in physics is such a system, the self-energy of which is much higher than the kinetic one. The existence of such systems, consisting not of atoms or molecules, but of electrons, was predicted in 1934 by the physicist Eugene Wigner. In 1974, it was obtained in an experiment with liquid helium, but the nature of the experiment did not allow observing the "melting" of the crystal - the transition of electrons to a less ordered state.

In order to create the crystal, the scientists took advantage of the tunnel transition effect, in which particles overcome the barrier if their energy is less than the height of the barrier. By passing electrons through a semiconductor, the scientists created a two-dimensional structure consisting of electrons of given energies. Instruments measuring the energy of the electrons showed a peak that, after much study, was taken to be an indication that the electrons had formed a crystal and were "vibrating in unison." "Vibration" here, of course, is just a figure of speech that allows us to imagine the synchronization of particle energies.

Then the scientists increased the density of the crystal, and the peak gradually faded away. So physicists proved that the crystal "melted", passing into the state of "electronic liquid".

Under normal conditions, electrons repel each other. Wigner suggested that at temperatures close to absolute zero, the same Coulomb forces that usually repel particles with the same charge will form some kind of lattice, and the electrons that find themselves at the nodes of this lattice will turn into a crystal. Such a crystal will not conduct an electric current in a substance that usually acts as a conductor.

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