Room Temperature

Researchers from Berkeley Lab, UC Berkeley, UC Riverside, Argonne National Laboratory, Nanjing University and the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, have developed an ultrathin magnet that operates at room temperature. This development could lead to new applications in computing and electronics - such as high-density, compact spintronic memory devices - and new tools for the study of quantum physics.

"We're the first to make a room-temperature 2D magnet that is chemically stable under ambient conditions," said senior author Jie Yao, a faculty scientist in Berkeley Lab's Materials Sciences Division and associate professor of materials science and engineering at UC Berkeley. "This discovery is exciting because it not only makes 2D magnetism possible at room temperature, but it also uncovers a new mechanism to realize 2D magnetic materials," added Rui Chen, a UC Berkeley graduate student in the Yao Research Group and lead author on the study.

Researchers from Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), University of California and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have discovered the existence of elusive spin dynamics in quantum mechanical systems.

The team successfully simulated and measured spins - magnetic particles, which can exhibit a motion known as Kardar-Parisi-Zhang in solid materials at varying temperatures. Up until now, scientists have only found evidence of the spin dynamics in soft matter and other classical materials.

University of Groningen researchers have measured the presence of electron-spin-dependent nonlinearity in a van der Waals heterostructure spintronic device. The team went on to demonstrate its application for basic analog operations such as essential elements of amplitude modulation and frequency sum (heterodyne detection) on pure spin signals, by exploiting the second-harmonic generation of the spin signal due to nonlinear spin injection.

Graphene (light green) with boron nitride (blue) on top. Measuring points indicated in orange.

The researchers also showed that the presence of nonlinearity in the spin signal has an amplifying effect on the energy-dependent conductivity-induced nonlinear spin-to-charge conversion effect. The interaction of the two spin-dependent nonlinear effects in the spin-transport channel leads to a highly efficient modulation of the spin-to-charge conversion effect, which in principle can also be measured without using a ferromagnetic detector. These effects are measured both at room and low temperatures, and are suitable for their applications as nonlinear circuit elements in the fields of advanced spintronics and spin-based neuromorphic computing.

Researchers from the Energy Department’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), quite accidentally, discovered that perovskite materials, grown using solution processing, exhibit the optical Stark effect at room temperatures.

The NREL team used the Stark effect to remove the degeneracy of the excitonic spin states within the perovskite sample. The optical Stark effect can be used to create promising technologies, including the potential to be used as an ultrafast optical switch. In addition, it can be used to control or address individual spin states, which is needed for spin-based quantum computing.