Indian Institute of Technology GuwahatiResearchers has identified a novel and unusual phenomenon on conducting properties of electrons or electrical conductivity in solid materials. 

Such re-emergence of the conducting character of the wire (or resumption of the flow of electrons even in presence of a steeper barricade) is not known earlier anywhere in scientific literature.

The research paper has been co-authored by Prof. Saurabh Basu, Department of Physics, IIT Guwahati, Tapan Mishra, Assistant Professor, Department of Physics, IIT Guwahati, and Shilpi Roy, PhD Scholar, Department of Physics, IIT Guwahati. 

This finding has been published in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Physical Review Letters, which is one of the most reputed journals in physics published by the American Physical Society.

Fundamentally, electrons are important constituents of atoms, and atoms are the building blocks of matter, as learnt in school science textbooks. The electric current that flows in a conductor is due to the motion of electrons. If such a motion is obstructed by placing an obstacle in their path, for example, cutting a copper wire into two parts and then joining them again with a plastic insulator piece in between, the flow of electrons will be stopped forever. 

Previously, it was considered that there will be no longer passage of current in the wire. The reason being that the electrons see the plastic as a barricade that stops them from propagating further. 

Practical utilisation of these findings is not immediately available but it will lead to exciting outcomes in the future.