Corona dischargeA corona discharge is an electrical discharge caused by the ionization of a fluid such as air surrounding a conductor carrying a high voltage. It represents a local region where the air (or other fluid) has undergone electrical breakdown and become conductive, allowing charge to continuously leak off the conductor into the air. A corona discharge occurs at locations where the strength of the electric field (potential gradient) around a conductor exceeds the dielectric strength of the air.
StaneneStanene is a topological insulator, theoretically predicted by Prof. Shoucheng Zhang's group at Stanford, which may display dissipationless currents at its edges near room temperature. It is composed of tin atoms arranged in a single layer, in a manner similar to graphene. Stanene got its name by combining stannum (the Latin name for tin) with the suffix -ene used by graphene. Research is ongoing in Germany and China, as well as at laboratories at Stanford and UCLA.
