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Category: materials

Coexisting magnetic states in 2D material promise major energy savings in memory chips

It is anticipated that within just a few decades, the surging volume of digital data will constitute one of the world’s largest energy consumers. Now, researchers at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, have made a breakthrough that could shift the paradigm: an atomically thin material that enables two opposing magnetic forces to coexist—dramatically reducing energy consumption in memory devices by a factor of 10.

This discovery could pave the way for a new generation of ultra-efficient, reliable memory solutions for AI, and advanced data processing.

The article, “Coexisting Non-Trivial Van der Waals Magnetic Orders Enable Field-Free Spin-Orbit Torque Magnetization Dynamics” has been published in Advanced Materials.

AI system learns from many types of scientific information and runs experiments to discover new materials

Materials science experiments can also face reproducibility challenges. To address the problem, CRESt monitors its experiments with cameras, looking for potential problems and suggesting solutions via text and voice to human researchers.

The researchers used CRESt to develop an electrode material for an advanced type of high-density fuel cell known as a direct formate fuel cell. After exploring more than 900 chemistries over three months, CRESt discovered a catalyst material made from eight elements that achieved a 9.3-fold improvement in power density per dollar over pure palladium, an expensive precious metal. In further tests, CRESTs material was used to deliver a record power density to a working direct formate fuel cell even though the cell contained just one-fourth of the precious metals of previous devices.

The results show the potential for CRESt to find solutions to real-world energy problems that have plagued the materials science and engineering community for decades.

Broadband photodetector material senses visible light to long-wave infrared, simplifying device design

A research team in South Korea has developed a next-generation sensor material capable of integrating the detection of multiple light wavelengths.

A joint research team led by Dr. Wooseok Song at the Korea Research Institute of Chemical Technology (KRICT) and Professor Dae Ho Yoon at Sungkyunkwan University successfully developed a new photodetector material that can sense a wider range of wavelengths compared to existing commercial materials, and achieved cost-effective synthesis on a 6-inch wafer-scale substrate.

This research is published in ACS Nano.

Doping triggers tunable charge density wave in 2D antiferromagnetic semiconductor

Researchers at the National University of Singapore (NUS) have observed a doping-tunable charge density wave (CDW) in a single-layer semiconductor, Chromium(III) selenide (Cr2Se3), extending the CDW phenomenon from metals to doped semiconductors.

CDWs are intriguing electronic patterns widely observed in metallic two-dimensional (2D) transition metal chalcogenides (TMCs). The study of CDW provides insights into emergent orders in , where electron correlations play a non-negligible role. However, most reported TMCs exhibiting CDW are intrinsic metals, and tuning their carrier density is predominantly accomplished through intercalation or atomic substitution. These approaches may introduce impurities or defects that complicate the understanding of the underlying mechanisms.

A research team led by Professor Chen Wei from the Department of Physics and the Department of Chemistry at NUS, synthesized single-layer semiconducting Cr2Se3 and demonstrated the CDW phenomenon using scanning tunneling microscopy (STM).

Engineers develop a magnetic transistor for more energy-efficient electronics

Transistors, the building blocks of modern electronics, are typically made of silicon. Because it’s a semiconductor, this material can control the flow of electricity in a circuit. But silicon has fundamental physical limits that restrict how compact and energy-efficient a transistor can be.

MIT researchers have now replaced silicon with a magnetic semiconductor, creating a magnetic transistor that could enable smaller, faster, and more energy-efficient circuits. The material’s magnetism strongly influences its electronic behavior, leading to more efficient control of the flow of electricity.

The team used a novel magnetic material and an optimization process that reduces the material’s defects, which boosts the transistor’s performance.

MIT engineers develop a magnetic transistor for more energy-efficient electronics

Transistors, the building blocks of modern electronics, are typically made of silicon. Because it’s a semiconductor, this material can control the flow of electricity in a circuit. But silicon has fundamental physical limits that restrict how compact and energy-efficient a transistor can be.

MIT researchers have now replaced silicon with a magnetic semiconductor, creating a magnetic transistor that could enable smaller, faster, and more energy-efficient circuits. The material’s magnetism strongly influences its electronic behavior, leading to more efficient control of the flow of electricity.

The team used a novel magnetic material and an optimization process that reduces the material’s defects, which boosts the transistor’s performance.

Rare-earth tritellurides reveal a hidden ferroaxial order of electronic origin

The discovery of “hidden orders,” organization patterns in materials that cannot be detected using conventional measurement tools, can yield valuable insight, which can in turn support the design of new materials with advantageous properties and characteristics. The hidden orders that condensed matter physicists hope to uncover lie within so-called charge density waves (CDWs).

CDWs are periodic wave-like modulations of the electronic charge inside a crystal. CDWs in rare-earth tellurides, compounds containing tellurium and other rare-earth elements, have been found to sometimes give rise to unusual physical phenomena that are not observed in the absence of these wave-like states of matter.

Researchers at Boston College, Cornell University and other institutes recently observed a ferroaxial order in rare-earth tellurides that appears to originate from a combination of coupled orbital and charge patterns.

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