McGill physicists discover new state of matter

Canadian physicists say they have discovered a previously unknown state of matter that could have a momentous impact on creation of new electronic devices. McGill University researchers say the new state of matter, a quasi-three- dimensional electron crystal, is a material very much like those used in the fabrication of modern transistors. "It's actually not quite 3-D, it's an in-between state, a totally new phenomenon," said Guillaume Gervais, director of McGill's Ultra-Low Temperature Condensed Matter Experiment Lab. "This is the kind of thing the theoreticians love. Now they're scratching their heads and trying to fine-tune their models."

The researchers' findings appear in the journal Nature Physics.