Plastic typically insulates, protecting you from nervous-system-frying electrocution. But a team of Dutch researchers have discovered that if you mash two types of plastic together just right, they’ll conduct electricity as well as metal and exhibit properties that trump high-tech semiconductors.

Alberto Morpurgo and a team at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands squashed a micrometer of the organic polymer TTF to another micro-layer of a polymer called TCNQ. The two plastics stick together due to van der Waals forces—weak magnetic forces that act on molecules. Both polymers are insulators, but when they’re forced together electricity flows along the junction as well as it flows through metal.

Morpurgo believes that electrons are able to jump between spaces in the TCNQ molecules, allowing current to flow. It’s a new way to channel current and the researchers expect to discover many “interesting electronic properties” as they examine the material further.

The new polymer combo could replace semiconductors in circuitry. (Semiconductors are used to control the flow of electrons and are indispensable to modern electronics.) According to researchers, it’s much better at conducting electricity than current semiconductors.

Jochen Mannhart at the University of Augsburg in Germany told NewScientist:

“The electron concentration there is an order of magnitude higher,” he says. “That has the power to create new effects, from magnetism to superconductivity.”

Link to NewScientist article.