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While insulating against electrical currents

Tohoku University, Osaka University and Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) announced that they succeeded in directly observing electron spins in a topological insulator.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Magnetic studies of ultrathin slabs of copper-oxide materials reveal that at very low temperatures, the thinnest, isolated layers lose their long-range magnetic order and instead behave like a "quantum spin liquid" - a state of matter where the orientations of electron spins fluctuate wildly. This unexpected discovery by scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory and collaborators at the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland may offer support for the idea that this novel condensed state of matter is a precursor to the emergence of high-temperature superconductivity - the ability to carry current with no resistance.

The properties of a material are greatly affected by the electrical and magnetic structure of its constituent ions and electrons. In a ferromagnet, for example, neighboring electron spins point in the same direction, producing a strong external magnetic field