Associate Professor Mazhar Ali and his research group at TU Delft have discovered one-way superconductivity without magnetic fields, something that was thought to be impossible ever since its discovery in 1911 – up till now. The discovery, which was published in Nature yesterday, makes use of 2D quantum materials and paves the way towards superconducting computing. Superconductors can make electronics hundreds of times faster, all with zero energy loss. Ali: “If the 20th century was the century of semi-conductors, the 21st can become the century of the superconductor.”

During the 20th century many scientists, including Nobel Prize winners, have puzzled over the nature of superconductivity, which was discovered by Dutch physicist Kamerlingh Onnes in 1911. In superconductors, a current goes through a wire without any resistance, which means inhibiting this current or even blocking it is hardly possible – let alone getting the current to flow only one way and not the other. That Dr. Heng Wu and Dr. Yaojia Wang, the lead researchers in Ali’s group who carried out this study, managed to make superconducting one-directional – necessary for computing – is remarkable: one can compare it to inventing a special type of ice which gives you zero friction when skating one way, but insurmountable friction the other way.

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