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Nature Materials 7, 929–930 (1 December 2008) | doi:10.1038/nmat2327

Superconductivity: Squash and sandwiches

Erio Tosatti

Among many other materials showing unusual properties, a class of layered compounds exemplified by 1T-TaS2 (called simply TaS2 in what follows), whose layers consist of one-atom-thick metal sheets (here tantalum) sandwiched between two sheets of chalcogen (here sulphur), became relatively famous during the 1970s. On page 960 of this issue, Sipos et al. show that despite much attention and published work for more than three decades, there is still new physics to be — literally — squeezed out of these materials.