A powerful new method to control magnetic behavior in ultra-thin materials could lead to faster, smaller and more energy-efficient technologies, a study suggests.
Researchers have developed a new way to precisely tune magnetism using a material—called CrPS4—that is just a few atoms thick. The study is published in the journal Nature Materials.
The advance could solve a long-standing scientific problem and pave the way for the development of new smart magnetic technologies, from computer memory devices to next-generation electronics, the team says.
Magnetism is central to how digital memory works, with tiny magnetic regions inside computers used to store information.
These magnetic regions are controlled by tiny shifts in the magnetic behavior, a process called exchange bias. However, until now, exchange bias was difficult to study and even harder to control because it happens at buried, imperfect interfaces between different materials.
Researchers from the University of Edinburgh, Boston College and Binghamton University have devised a way of overcoming these challenges.
Instead of stacking different materials on top of each other, the team discovered they could achieve the same control within CrPS4, a type of semiconductor.
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