Topological insulators (TIs) are a class of materials with surfaces that host a new quantum state of matter and are insensitive to contaminants, defects and impurities. Surface electrons in TIs behave ...

Discover the science behind mirrors and glass, from electron behavior to topological materials, explained by IIT Kanpur ...

It hardly conducts any electricity at all, so we can say it’s an electrical insulator. Inside the plastic, all the electrons are tightly bound to the atoms, so the charges cannot move very far ...

Noble gases such as helium and neon are poor conductors of electricity, so we call them electrical insulators. Copper and ...

Metals, as most know them, are good conductors of electricity. That's because the countless electrons in a metal like gold or ...

In the standard point of view for metals and insulators, electrons have both an itinerant tendency and mutually repulsive interactions. In the limit of strong repulsions, electrons tend to ...

Topological insulators are materials that are insulating in their interior but can support the flow of electrons on their surface. The underlying cause is time-reversal symmetry: their physics is ...

In conductors, the valence band (which holds electrons) and the conduction band (where electrons move freely) overlap, enabling easy electron flow. Insulators, by contrast, have a large band gap ...