Under special conditions, certain plastics can turn into the powerful conductors of electricity known as superconductors. Physicists are beginning to become more and more interested in the factors capable of conferring such unusual fundamental properties on polymers. One such researcher is Michel Côté, the youngest professor in the Université de Montréal department of physics. Côté's specialty is calculating and digitally simulating the properties of organic materials - materials made of complex carbon molecules. Using ultra-fast, high-performance computers, he can create a virtually limitless number of unknown organic compounds. But the operative word is...virtually. "Just imagine, I'm designing objects that don't yet exist in reality, or if they do exist, it's in such small amounts no one knows," he says with a smile.

Perhaps the most famous examples of virtual modeling are the fullerenes - the geodesic dome-shaped molecule C60 and its near relatives, created by scientists in Texas in 1985 and named after R. Buckminster Fuller. These "buckyballs" are a form of carbon compound so rare they were believed to be nonexistent in the universe...until infinitesimally small fullerene traces were found in fragments of meteorites on earth. That discovery earned C60's "creators" Robert Curl, Harold Kroto and Richard Smalley the 1996 Nobel Prize for Chemistry.

According to Michel Côté, the "plasticity" of carbon molecules now makes it possible to create new virtual materials that could be of major interest to the electronics industry. One short-term consequence, he believes, could be a revolution in the field of monitors, including computer screens and the giant electronic billboards used by advertisers. "Given that these materials emit light naturally in the blue region of the spectrum," he continues, "by adding yellow and red you would complete the trio of primary colors, which opens the door to on-screen reproduction of an infinite number of colors, all at minimum cost compared to traditional materials."

But there's still a long way to go before Côté gets there. No one yet knows precisely what factors determine the electronic properties of these new materials. It still isn't even known, for instance, just how electrons travel in organic materials. "The interaction between electrons and 'holes' is stronger, but that still doesn't let us define the process of electron displacement, or how, when traveling between atoms, they're sort of everywhere at once - as if inter-atomic space was a medium in itself, a sort of Jello with nuts floating in it," the researcher adds.

With strong links to the digital physics group at UdeM, the 31-year-old physicist, a recent graduate of the University of California at Berkeley and Cambridge University in England, is continuing his work in collaboration with a group led by Mario Leclerc at Laval University.

Researcher: Michel Côté
Phone: (514) 343-5628
Funding: Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), Fonds québécois de la recherche sur la nature et les technologies, Canadian Foundation for Innovation