2. Quantum Leaps: Static Electricity’s Role in Quantum Tunneling
Within the field of quantum mechanics, static electricity displays actions that challenge conventional wisdom and would have fascinated Einstein. At the atomic level, quantum tunneling—the phenomena whereby particles can pass through barriers they conventionally shouldn’t be able to overcome—is intricately related to static electricity. Under some conditions, the static electric field can be so powerful that it bends the energy bands of electrons, therefore enabling conditions for quantum tunnelling. This effect has useful consequences in contemporary technology, not only for laboratory curiosity. Found in our computers and cellphones, flash memory devices write and erase data using quantum tunnelling driven by stationary electric fields. Under the effect of a high electric field, electrons tunnel across an insulating barrier allowing stored charges to be manipulated. This quantum behaviour of stationary electricity exposes the great link between ordinary events and the strange universe of quantum mechanics, so challenging our macroscopic instincts. Einstein would have been astounded if we had used our daily omnipresent electronic devices to exploit this quantum effect, therefore demonstrating how basic physics ideas might produce new innovations.