When an electric current passed through a semiconductor perpendicular to an external magnetic field, the charge carriers were deflected, producing an additional electric field perpendicular to both the current and the magnetic field. This created a potential difference across the semiconductor. This phenomenon was called the Hall effect.
If electrons were confined to a two-dimensional plane, then subjected to a magnetic field perpendicular to that plane while a current was run along one direction of the two-dimensional electron plane, a voltage could be measured in the other direction of the plane. This was the quantum Hall effect, the quantum-mechanical version of the Hall effect. In the quantum Hall effect, the electrons that actually conducted electricity were edge electrons, while the center remained insulating.
This quantum effect had applications in many electrical components. For example, the Hall sensors in mobile phones relied on it to calculate the relationship between electric current and Earth's magnetic field, thereby determining the cardinal directions.
As research deepened, it might play a role in the energy consumption and heat dissipation of semiconductor devices in the future, perhaps even breaking through Moore's law in computing.
After drinking with Tao Xun, Du Ke returned to the villa and began cramming knowledge related to the Hall effect and quantum Hall effect.
It was not a sudden whim. As electron flow theory advanced, the papers he needed to write were growing increasingly profound, and they would inevitably involve theories such as the quantum Hall effect. After all, electron flow theory was still a branch of condensed matter physics. Though it was a new line of thought, overlap with other theories was unavoidable. Du Ke could complete the research independently, but he could not make it fully convincing on his own.
He had to begin citing other people's papers to make