Electrons in Graphene Flow Like a Frictionless Fluid, Defying a Century-Old Law of Physics

Scientists at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bengaluru and Japan's National Institute for Materials Science published findings on April 15, 2026 showing electrons in ultraclean graphene flowing like a nearly frictionless liquid. The work, reported by ScienceDaily and Nature, defies the century-old Wiedemann–Franz law that ties electrical conductivity to thermal conductivity in normal metals.

Working with graphene devices encapsulated in hexagonal boron nitride to remove disorder, the team tracked charge and heat transport near the "Dirac point" — a condition where graphene sits between metal and insulator and electrons stop behaving as individuals. There, the team measured a 200-fold deviation from the law: thermal conductivity rose dramatically while electrical conductivity stayed low.

“The work, reported by ScienceDaily and Nature, defies the century-old Wiedemann–Franz law that ties electrical conductivity to thermal conductivity in normal metals.”

The carriers form what physicists call a "Dirac fluid" — a collective, hydrodynamic flow with viscosity so low it approaches the limits of a perfect fluid. This mirrors the behavior of the quark–gluon plasma generated in CERN's particle accelerators, suggesting that a humble flake of graphene can serve as a tabletop laboratory for relativistic hydrodynamics.

The result is more than a physics curiosity: hydrodynamic electron transport could inform a new class of low-loss devices and improve our understanding of strongly correlated quantum systems. The researchers caution that the effect requires extreme cleanliness and low temperatures, but the door is now open to engineering quantum materials that move energy in fundamentally new ways.