New material combines useful, typically incompatible properties

For News Media EMBARGOED BY THE JOURNAL NATURE UNTIL NOON CENTRAL DAYLIGHT TIME ON APRIL 20, 2016 - × - Mild-mannered Dr. Jekyll and malicious Mr. Hyde were opposite aspects of the same man, and their story ended in tragedy because the two couldn't peacefully coexist. Most materials, too, are capable of being only one thing at a time, but a team of engineers and physicists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have created an entirely new material in which completely contradictory properties can coexist. The compound, which "Polar metals should not be possible," says Chang-Beom Eom, the professor of materials science and engineering who led the research. Undeterred by the laws of the universe, Eom and colleagues created a compound that is a scientific oxymoron. Through a new synthesis approach supported by computational modeling, the group made a crystal with multiple personalities: part polar, part metallic. Metals conduct electricity because electrons flow freely throughout them. Polar materials, by contrast, impede the free flow of electrons and work as electrical insulators.