Viscous electronics and its signature in graphene

In most metals, electrons scatter off impurities and move like a diffusing gas. Under the right conditions, though, they collide mainly with one another and start to flow like a fluid, complete with viscosity and the swirls and back-flow that fluids show.

Researchers in the department showed that ultra-clean graphene is one of the clearest places to see this viscous electron flow, and identified a measurable signature of it, connecting condensed-matter physics with the hydrodynamics of complex flows. The work was published in Nature Physics.