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Nature 445, 492-493 (1 February 2007) | doi:10.1038/445492a; Published online 31 January 2007

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Materials science: Synergy in a superlattice

James R. Heath1

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Put two types of crystal together in one lattice, and the resulting material can have properties greater than the sum of those of its individual components. Until now, that's been a difficult trick to pull off on a large scale.

Many applications in materials science require the preparation of crystalline solids that are essentially perfect, only for impurities to be added back into them to achieve a particular physical property. Microelectronics is the obvious example: pure silicon is the foundation of modern integrated circuits, but only by adding atomic impurities (dopants) into the silicon lattice can it be tuned from being an insulator to a semiconductor to a metal.

  1. James R. Heath is in the Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Mail Code 127-72, 1200 East California Boulevard, Pasadena, California 91125, USA.
    Email: heath@caltech.edu

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