Electrons become fractions of themselves in graphene, study finds

Physicists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have found that when five sheets of graphene are stacked like steps on a staircase, the resulting structure provides the right conditions for electrons to pass through as fractions of their total charge, with no need for any external magnetic field. The results are the first evidence of the "fractional quantum anomalous Hall effect" (the term "anomalous" refers to the absence of a magnetic field) in crystalline graphene, a material that physicists did not expect to exhibit this effect.