Scientists have made a breakthrough discovery in the field of multiferroics, materials that could revolutionize computer memory, chemical sensors, and quantum computers. Researchers from the University of Texas at Austin and the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter (MPSD) in Hamburg have found that nickel iodide (NiI2), a layered multiferroic material, exhibits extremely strong magnetoelectric coupling, making it an ideal candidate for ultra-fast and compact devices.
When irradiated with an ultrafast laser pulse, NiI2 produces chiral helical magnetoelectric oscillations, which could be used for fast data storage. The team, led by Edoardo Baldini and Angel Rubio, included postdoctoral fellow Frank Gao and graduate student Xinyue Peng as co-lead authors. Their findings, published in Nature, pave the way for extremely fast and energy-efficient magnetoelectric devices, including magnetic memories, and have potential applications in chemical sensors and quantum computing platforms.
Unlocking the Potential of Multiferroics for Next-Generation Devices
Multiferroic materials have long been of interest to scientists due to their unique properties, which make them suitable for a range of applications including computer memory, chemical sensors, and quantum computers. A recent study published in Nature has demonstrated that nickel iodide (NiI2), a layered multiferroic material, may be the best candidate yet for devices that are extremely fast and compact.
When irradiated with an ultrafast laser pulse, NiI2 exhibits chiral helical magnetoelectric oscillations, which could be useful for fast, compact data storage. The researchers found that NiI2 has greater magnetoelectric coupling than any known material of its kind, making it a prime candidate for technology advances.
Magnetoelectric Coupling: A Key Property of Multiferroics
Multiferroics have a special property called magnetoelectric coupling, which means that magnetic properties can be manipulated with an electric field and vice versa. This property makes multiferroics attractive candidates for faster, smaller, and more efficient devices. The researchers accomplished this by exciting NiI2 with ultrashort laser pulses in the femtosecond range and then tracking the resulting changes in the material’s electric and magnetic orders and magnetoelectric coupling via their impact on specific optical properties.
To understand why the magnetoelectric coupling is so much stronger in NiI2 than in similar materials, the team performed extensive calculations. They found that two factors play important roles: the strong coupling between the electrons’ spin and orbital motion on the iodine atoms (spin-orbit coupling) and the particular form of the magnetic order in nickel iodide (a spin spiral or spin helix).
Potential Applications of NiI2
Materials like NiI2 with large magnetoelectric coupling have a wide range of potential applications. These include magnetic computer memory that is compact, energy efficient, and much faster than existing memory systems; interconnects in quantum computing platforms; and chemical sensors that can ensure quality control and drug safety in the chemical and pharmaceutical industries.
The researchers hope that these groundbreaking insights can be used to identify other materials with similar magnetoelectric properties and that other material engineering techniques could possibly lead to a further enhancement of the magnetoelectric coupling in NiI2.
The Research Team and Funding
This work was conceived and supervised by Edoardo Baldini, assistant professor of physics at the University of Texas, and Angel Rubio, director of the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter (MPSD). The research team included Xinle Cheng and Peizhe Tang from the MPSD’s Theory Group, as well as Michael Sentef, a former Emmy Noether group leader at the MPSD who is now a professor of theoretical solid-state physics at the University of Bremen.
Funding for this research was provided by several organizations, including the Robert A. Welch Foundation, the U.S. National Science Foundation, the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation program, the Cluster of Excellence “CUI: Advanced Imaging of Matter,” Grupos Consolidados, the Max Planck-New York City Center for Non-Equilibrium Quantum Phenomena, the Simons Foundation, and the Ministry of Science and Technology in Taiwan.
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