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Insulators
Insulator may refer to: * Insulator (electricity), a substance that resists electricity ** Pin insulator, a device that isolates a wire from a physical support such as a pin on a utility pole ** Strain insulator, a device that is designed to work in mechanical tension to withstand the pull of a suspended electrical wire or cable ** Mott insulator, a type of electrical insulator ** Topological insulator, a material that behaves as an insulator in its interior while permitting the movement of charges on its boundary * Insulator (genetics), an element in the genetic code * Thermal insulation, a material used to resist the flow of heat * Building insulation Building insulation is material used in a building (specifically the building envelope) to reduce the flow of thermal energy. While the majority of insulation in buildings is for thermal insulation, thermal purposes, the term also applies to ..., the material used in building construction to prevent heat loss See also * ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Topological Insulator
A topological insulator is a material whose interior behaves as an electrical insulator while its surface behaves as an electrical conductor, meaning that electrons can only move along the surface of the material. A topological insulator is an insulator for the same reason a " trivial" (ordinary) insulator is: there exists an energy gap between the valence and conduction bands of the material. But in a topological insulator, these bands are, in an informal sense, "twisted", relative to a trivial insulator. The topological insulator cannot be continuously transformed into a trivial one without untwisting the bands, which closes the band gap and creates a conducting state. Thus, due to the continuity of the underlying field, the border of a topological insulator with a trivial insulator (including vacuum, which is topologically trivial) is forced to support conducting edge states. Since this results from a global property of the topological insulator's band structure, local (s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
