Researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the University of Science and Technology of China have demonstrated considerable control of magnetism at low electric fields (E) at room temperature. The E-induced phase transformation and lattice distortion were found to lead to the E control of magnetism in multiferroic BiFeO₃-based solid solutions near the morphotropic phase boundary (MPB). 

Multiferroic materials, with magnetic and ferroelectric properties, are promising for multifunctional memory devices. Magnetoelectric-based control methods in insulating multiferroic materials require less energy and have potential for high-speed, low-power information storage applications. BiFeO₃ is a room-temperature multiferroic material with potential for use in spintronics devices, but its weak ferromagnetic and magnetoelectric effects and high voltage required for manipulation are weaknesses. In their recent study, the researchers grew single crystals of the multiferroic 0.58BiFeO₃-0.42Bi_0.5K_0.5TiO₃ (BF-BKT), which lies in the tetragonal region adjacent to the MPB.

A group of physicists, led by Prof. SHAO Dingfu from the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science (HFIPS) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), has predicted "parallel circuits" of spin currents in antiferromagnets, which can accelerate spintronics.

Spin-polarized electric currents play a central role in spintronics, due to the capabilities of manipulation and detection of magnetic moment directions for writing and reading 1s and 0s. Currently, most spintronic devices are based on ferromagnets, where the net magnetizations can efficiently spin polarize electric currents. Antiferromagnets, with opposite magnetic moments aligned alternately, are not quite as investigated but may promise even faster and smaller spintronic devices.

A new $7.5 million project, led by the University of Michigan, will embrace lines of shifted atoms, or dislocations, in electronic materials (which have long been considered detrimental due to their tendency to impede the flow of electricity), and use them to possibly enable faster and more efficient information processing.

Funded by the Department of Defense, the project aims to understand how dislocations could be used as nano-pipelines to channel electrons while manipulating their spins. The project also involves researchers from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

A team of researchers at MIT, Complutense University of Madrid and the University of Pavia has designed a perovskite-based device that combines aspects of electronics and photonics, that could lead to new kinds of computer chips or quantum qubits.

The new work involved sandwiching tiny flakes of a perovskite material in between two precisely spaced reflective surfaces. By creating these perovskite sandwiches and stimulating them with laser beams, the researchers were able to directly control the momentum of certain “quasiparticles” within the system. Known as exciton-polariton pairs, these quasiparticles are hybrids of light and matter. Being able to control this property could ultimately make it possible to read and write data to devices based on this phenomenon.

Researchers from the Korea Research Institute of Standards and Science (KRISS), Konkuk University, Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) and Pusan National University have pioneered the world's first transistor capable of controlling skyrmions. This breakthrough paves the way for the development of next-generation ultra-low-power devices and is anticipated to make significant contributions to quantum and AI research. 

Skyrmions, arranged in a vortex-like spin structure, are unique because they can be miniaturized to several nanometers, making them movable with exceptionally low power. This characteristic positions them as a crucial element in the evolution of spintronics applications.

A joint Collaborative Research Centre between Leipzig University and Chemnitz University of Technology will receive multi-million funding. The Collaborative Research Centre, to be known as HYP*MOL, will bring together 29 professors and early career researchers from both universities, as well as other external research partners, to study electron and nuclear spin hyperpolarization in molecular systems.

“This funding is both a cause for celebration and a great incentive for everyone involved,” says Professor Eva Inés Obergfell, Rector of Leipzig University. “Hyperpolarization is an exciting and rapidly evolving field of research. I believe that our research team will contribute new insights that will be appreciated at an international level.” Leipzig University is now involved in 16 Collaborative Research Centres and represents five of them. “This is something to be proud of and should encourage us to submit more applications.”

Researchers from the University of Nottingham, Diamond Light Source, Czech Academy of Sciences and The University of New South Wales have shown for the first time how electrical creation and control of magnetic vortices in an antiferromagnet can be achieved, a discovery that could increase the data storage capacity and speed of next generation devices.

The team used magnetic imaging techniques to map the structure of newly formed magnetic vortices and demonstrate their back-and-forth movement due to alternating electrical pulses. 

Researchers from Brown University, Michigan State University, Columbia University, Sandia National Laboratories in the U.S, Japan's National Institute for Materials Science and Austria's University of Innsbruck have observed low-energy collective excitations in twisted bilayer graphene near the magic angle, using a resistively detected electron spin resonance technique. 

For many years, scientists have been trying to directly manipulate the spin of electrons in 2D materials like graphene. Doing so could yield key advances in the world of 2D electronics, a field where super-fast, small and flexible electronic devices carry out computations based on quantum mechanics. Standing in the way is that the typical way in which scientists measure the spin of electrons — an essential behavior that gives everything in the physical universe its structure — usually doesn’t work in 2D materials. This makes it incredibly difficult to fully understand the materials and propel forward technological advances based on them. But a team of scientists led by Brown University researchers believe they now have a way around this longstanding challenge. 

Researchers from Tohoku University in Japan, University of California Riverside and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology detail a decade of research advancements in the emerging field of antiferromagnetic spintronics that holds the promise of moving beyond today’s world of electrons moving through semiconductors.

As computers and other electronic devices become faster and more powerful, they are coming closer to a physical limitation caused by heat generated by the electrons that carry information as they move through semiconductors. “Making heat is a fundamental limit that will prevent the further development of electronic devices. So, we are basically hitting a bottleneck because our computers are way faster than they used to be two decades ago,” said Ran Cheng, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering with UCR’s Bourns College of Engineering. Workarounds like cooling systems can go only so far as artificial intelligence, machine learning, video streaming, and other applications demand faster and faster computer processing and memory retrievals.

The discovery of new quantum materials with magnetic properties could pave the way for ultra-fast and considerably more energy-efficient computers and mobile devices. So far, however, these types of materials have been shown to work only at extremely cold temperatures. Now, for the first time, a research team at Chalmers University of Technology, Lund University and Uppsala University in Sweden has created a two-dimensional (2D) magnetic quantum material that works at room temperature.

Today’s rapid expansion of information technology (IT) is generating massive amounts of digital data that needs to be stored, processed and communicated. This requires energy, and IT is projected to account for over 30% of the world’s total energy consumption by 2050. To solve this problem, the research community is entering a new paradigm in materials science. The research and development of 2D quantum materials is opening new doors for sustainable, faster and more energy-efficient data storage and processing in computers and mobiles.