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Researchers identify light-induced Kondo-like exciton-spin interaction in neodymium(II) doped hybrid perovskite

In a recent sturdy, researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory and Northern Illinois University discovered that they could use light to detect the spin state in a class of materials called perovskites (specifically in this research methylammonium lead iodide, or MAPbI3). 

To understand spin, consider electrons orbiting the atomic nucleus. When atoms are close together, they can share some of their outer electrons, which creates a bond between them. Each bond contains two electrons that are ​“paired,” meaning they share an orbital — the region where they move. Now, each of these paired electrons has one of two possible spin states: spin up or spin down. If one electron is spin up, the other is spin down. Since we can’t know exactly which electron has which spin without looking at them, we say they exist in a quantum superposition — a state where they are both spin up and spin down until observed.

Read the full story Posted: Oct 16,2024

Researchers develop chiral bifacial polymer films with spin selectivity

Researchers from Osaka University, Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) and Tokyo Institute of Technology have developed copolymer films that interact differently with currents with opposite polarization. 

Despite their identical composition, molecules that are mirror images can interact differently with light and electrical current depending on their chirality. In a recent study, the research team produced spin-coated chiral copolymer films that display strong spin polarization, which enables the films to act as "spin filters" that behave differently toward currents with opposite polarization directions.

Read the full story Posted: Sep 18,2024

Researchers develop new superconductor material that could benefit quantum computing

Researchers from the University of California - Riverside, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Rigaku Americas have developed a new superconductor material that could potentially be used in quantum computing and be a candidate 'topological superconductor.'

A topological superconductor uses a delocalized state of an electron or hole (a hole behaves like an electron with positive charge) to carry quantum information and process data in a robust manner. The researchers reported in their recent work that they combined trigonal tellurium with a surface state superconductor generated at the surface of a thin film of gold. Trigonal tellurium is a chiral material, which means it cannot be superimposed on its mirror image, like our left and right hands. Trigonal tellurium is also non-magnetic. Nonetheless, the researchers observed quantum states at the interface that host well-defined spin polarization. The spin polarization allows the excitations to be potentially used for creating a spin quantum bit -- or qubit.

Read the full story Posted: Aug 25,2024

Researchers demonstrate generation of orbital current via magnetization dynamics

While the field of spintronics tries to leverage the spin angular momentum of electrons to develop new technologies, these particles' orbital momentum has so far been rarely considered. Currently, generating an orbital current (i.e., a flow of orbital angular momentum) remains far more challenging than generating a spin current. Nonetheless, approaches to successfully leveraging the orbital angular momentum of electrons could open the possibility for the development of a new class of devices called orbitronics.

Researchers at Japan's Keio University and Germany's Johannes Gutenberg University have reported the successful generation of an orbital current from magnetization dynamics, a phenomenon called orbital pumping. Their outlines a promising approach that could allow engineers to develop new technologies leveraging the orbital angular momentum of electrons.

Read the full story Posted: Jul 11,2024

Researchers demonstrate spin injection across chiral halide perovskite/III–V interfaces

Researchers from National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), University of Utah, Université de Lorraine CNRS and University of Colorado Boulder have improved upon their previous work, that included incorporating a perovskite layer that allowed the creation of a new type of polarized light-emitting diode (LED) that emits spin-controlled photons at room temperature without the use of magnetic fields or ferromagnetic contacts. In their latest work, they have gone a step further by integrating a III-V semiconductor optoelectronic structure with a chiral halide perovskite semiconductor.

The team transformed an existing commercialized LED into one that also controls the spin of electrons. The results could provide a pathway toward transforming modern optoelectronics, a field that relies on the control of light and encompasses LEDs, solar cells, and telecommunications lasers, among other devices.

Read the full story Posted: Jul 04,2024

Researchers control tiny magnetic states within ultrathin, 2D van der Waals magnets

Researchers at the University of Wyoming, Pennsylvania State University, Northeastern University, The University of Texas at Austin, Colorado State University and Japan's National Institute for Materials Science have developed a method to control tiny magnetic states within ultrathin, two-dimensional van der Waals magnets - a process similar to how flipping a light switch controls a bulb.

The team developed a device known as a magnetic tunnel junction, which uses chromium triiodide - a 2D insulating magnet only a few atoms thick - sandwiched between two layers of graphene. By sending a tiny electric current called a tunneling current through this sandwich, the direction of the magnet's orientation of the magnetic domains (around 100 nanometers in size) can be dictated within the individual chromium triiodide layers.

Read the full story Posted: May 15,2024

Researchers use heat to drive topological spin texture transformations

Researchers at Japan's RIKEN have conducted an experiment that could help the development of new energy-efficient spintronics devices. They used heat and magnetic fields to create transformations between spin textures—magnetic vortices and antivortices known as skyrmions and antiskyrmions—in a single crystal thin plate device. What's even more important is that they achieved this at room temperature.

Skyrmions and antiskyrmions, which are textures that exist within special magnetic materials involving the spin of the electrons in the material, are an active area of research, as they could be used for next-generation memory devices, for example, with skyrmions acting as a "1" bit and antiskyrmions a "0" bit. In the past, scientists have been able to move them in a variety of ways, and to create transformations between them using electric current. However, because current electronic devices consume electrical power and produce waste heat, the researchers in the group, led by Xiuzhen Yu at the RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science, decided to see if they could find a way to create the transformations using heat gradients.

Read the full story Posted: Jan 13,2024

Researchers observe and control spin waves in magnets with superconductors

Scientists at Delft University of Technology have used superconducting diamagnetism to shape the magnetic environment governing the transport of spin waves—collective spin excitations in magnets that are promising on-chip signal carriers—in a thin-film magnet. 

The team has shown that it’s possible to control and manipulate spin waves on a chip using superconductors for the first time. These tiny waves in magnets may offer an alternative to electronics in the future, interesting for energy-efficient information technology or connecting pieces in a quantum computer, for example. The results of this work give scientists new insight into the interaction between magnets and superconductors.

Read the full story Posted: Oct 28,2023

Researchers detect pair density wave state in UTe2

Scientists at Cornell University, Washington University in St. Louis and University of Maryland have revealed a new phase of matter in candidate topological superconductors that could have significant consequences for condensed matter physics and for the field of quantum computing and spintronics.

The researchers discovered and visualized a crystalline yet superconducting state in a new and unusual superconductor, Uranium Ditelluride (UTe2), using one of the world’s most powerful millikelvin Scanned Josephson Tunnelling Microscopes (SJTM). This “spin-triplet electron-pair crystal” is a previously unknown state of topological quantum matter.

Read the full story Posted: Jul 10,2023

Researchers develop way to use perovskite materials and light to control electron spins

Researchers from Cambridge University in the UK, Korea's DGIST and Harvard University in the U.S have shown that electron spins could become more efficient and easier to manage through a light-based approach using halide perovskite semiconductors. The team observed ultrafast spin-domain formation in polycrystalline halide perovskite thin films in response to irradiating the films with circularly polarized light at room temperature.

Photoinduced spin-charge interconversion in semiconductors, with spin-orbit coupling, could provide a route to spintronics that does not require external magnetic fields, which tend to be challenging to control. An electron can have two spin states, up or down, and these states can be used to store and process information. But manipulating spin states can be tricky, requiring the use of magnetic fields on perfectly ordered materials at extremely low temperatures to work.

Read the full story Posted: Jul 06,2023