Researchers tackle key obstacles to bringing 2D magnetic materials into practical use
Researchers at MIT have tackled key obstacles to bringing 2D magnetic materials into practical use. The team designed a “van der Waals atomically layered heterostructure” device where a 2D van der Waals magnet, iron gallium telluride, is interfaced with another 2D material, tungsten ditelluride. The team shows that the magnet can be toggled between the 0 and 1 states simply by applying pulses of electrical current across their two-layer device.
Use of magnetic materials to build computing devices like memories and processors has emerged as a promising avenue for creating “beyond-CMOS” computers, which would use far less energy compared to traditional computers. Magnetization switching in magnets can be used in computation the same way that a transistor switches from open or closed to represent the 0s and 1s of binary code. While much of the research along this direction has focused on using bulk magnetic materials, a new class of magnetic materials — called two-dimensional van der Waals magnets — provides superior properties that can improve the scalability and energy efficiency of magnetic devices to make them commercially viable.