Controversy clarified: Why two insulators together can transport electricity

How can two materials which do not conduct electricity create an electrically conducting layer when they are joined together? Since this effect was discovered in 2004, researchers have developed various hypotheses to answer this question – each with its own advocates, who defend it and try to prove its validity. Now, an international team under the leadership of researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute has probably settled the controversy. They have shown that it is the combination of the properties of both materials that produces the effect, and therefore disproved an alternative hypothesis, which proposes that the materials mix at the interface to create a new, conducting material. The materials under study are so-called perovskites, members of a large class of materials with interesting electrical or magnetic properties that could play a significant role in electronics and computing in the future. The results have been published in the scientific journal Nature Communications.

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