Switching off superconductivity solves a decade-old mystery in magic-angle graphene

Researchers at the University of Manchester's National Graphene Institute, led by lead author Julien Barrier and corresponding authors Professor Sir Andre Geim and Professor Alexey Berdyugin of the National University of Singapore, together with contributing researchers from the Henry Royce Institute, Washington University in St. Louis, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Antwerp, and Japan's National Institute for Materials Science, have shown that superconductivity in magic-angle twisted bilayer graphene can be completely suppressed by screening the electrical interactions between its electrons.

The result provides strong experimental evidence that electron-electron interactions, rather than atomic vibrations, drive the pairing behind the material's superconductivity, addressing a question that has remained open since magic-angle graphene's superconductivity was first discovered.