Magnetism Redefined: The Nanoscale Discovery Powering Future Technology

Researchers have discovered unseen interactions that could impact the future of electronics.

University of Missouri researchers have discovered a new quasiparticle in magnetic materials, challenging static notions of magnetism. This breakthrough could transform electronics and spintronics, leveraging electron spin for energy-efficient innovations like longer-lasting batteries.

Exploring the Nanoscale: A New Frontier

Explore a world so minuscule it defies imagination — the nanoscale. To picture it, take a single strand of hair and shrink it a million times. At this tiny scale, atoms and molecules act as master architects, crafting properties and behaviors that remain largely unexplored — until now.

Researchers Deepak Singh and Carsten Ullrich from the University of Missouri’s College of Arts and Science, together with their teams of students and postdoctoral fellows, have uncovered a groundbreaking phenomenon: a new type of quasiparticle present in all magnetic materials, regardless of their strength or temperature.

Unveiling the Dynamic Nature of Magnetism

This discovery challenges long-standing beliefs about magnetism, revealing it to be far more dynamic and complex than previously understood.

“We’ve all seen the bubbles that form in sparkling water or other carbonated drink products,” said Ullrich, Curators’ Distinguished Professor of Physics and Astronomy. “The quasiparticles are like those bubbles, and we found they can freely move around at remarkably fast speeds.”

This discovery could help the development of a new generation of electronics that are faster, smarter, and more energy efficient. But first, scientists need to determine how this finding could work into those processes.

Revolutionizing Spintronics Technology

One scientific field that could directly benefit from the researchers’ discovery is spintronics, or “spin electronics.” While traditional electronics use the electrical charge of electrons to store and process information, spintronics uses the natural spin of electrons — a property that is intrinsically linked to the quantum nature of electrons, Ullrich said.

For instance, a cell phone battery could last for hundreds of hours on one charge when powered by spintronics, said Singh, an associate professor of physics and astronomy who specializes in spintronics.

The Spin Advantage: Efficiency in Action

“The spin nature of these electrons is responsible for the magnetic phenomena,” Singh said. “Electrons have two properties: a charge and a spin. So, instead of using the conventional charge, we use the rotational, or spinning, property. It’s more efficient because the spin dissipates much less energy than the charge.”

Singh’s team, including former graduate student Jiason Guo, handled the experiments, using Singh’s years of expertise with magnetic materials to refine their properties. Ullrich’s team, with postdoctoral researcher Daniel Hill, analyzed Singh’s results and created models to explain the unique behavior they were observing under powerful spectrometers located at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

The current study builds on the team’s earlier study, published in Nature Communications, where they first reported this dynamic behavior on the nanoscale level.

Reference: “Emergent topological quasiparticle kinetics in constricted nanomagnets” by J. Guo, D. Hill, V. Lauter, L. Stingaciu, P. Zolnierczuk, C. A. Ullrich and D. K. Singh, 15 November 2024, Physical Review Research.
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevResearch.6.043144

This work was supported by grants from the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences (DE-SC0014461 and DE-SC0019109). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the funding agency.

Guo, who is now a postdoctoral fellow at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and Hill are the first and second authors on the study. The Mizzou researchers were joined by Valeria Lauter, Laura Stingaciu and Piotr Zolnierczuk, scientists at Oak Ridge.

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