A Third Class of Magnetism Could Give Future Digital Devices a Thousandfold Performance Boost
The previously-theoretical "altermagnetism" has now been imaged for the first time, confirming the existence of a third magnetic class.
Researchers from the University of Nottingham, MAX IV Laboratory, Harwell Science and Innovation Campus, Paul Scherrer Institut, the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), the Czech Academy of Sciences, Max Planck Institute, and Johannes Gutenberg University have made a discovery that could have a profound impact on the performance of future of digital devices: the existence of a third class of magnetism, dubbed altermagnetism.
"Altermagnets consist of magnetic moments that point antiparallel to their neighbours. However, each part of the crystal hosting these tiny moments is rotated with respect to its neighbors," explains project lead Peter Wadley of the breakthrough. "This is like antiferromagnetism with a twist! But this subtle difference has huge ramifications."
The concept of altermagnetism, a third form of magnetic order in which tiny magnetic building blocks align anti-parallel to their neighbors in a hosting structure that is rotated compared to it's own neighbors, is nothing new — but until now has been only theoretical. The team's work brings the concept out of theory and into the lab, creating, controlling, and imaging an altermagnetic device for the first time.
As magnetic materials are still heavily used in digital devices for non-volatile storage, proof of a third magnetic class could mean big things ahead: the team projects the potential for a thousandfold increase in microelectronic performance and memory capacity, should altermagnetism be adopted for future devices.
"Our experimental work has provided a bridge between theoretical concepts and real-life realization," claims Oliver Amin, co-corresponding author of the study and senior research fellow at the University of Nottingham, "which hopefully illuminates a path to developing altermagnetic materials for practical applications."
The team's work has been published in the journal Nature under open-access terms, but does not provide a likely timescale for commercialization of the discovery.
Main article image courtesy of Oliver Amin/University of Nottingham.