June 2021

Scientists have shown evidence of local symmetry breaking in a quantum material upon heating. They believe these local states are associated with electronic orbitals that serve as orbital degeneracy lifting (ODL) "precursors" to the titanium (Ti) dimers (two molecules linked together) formed when the material is cooled to low temperature. Understanding the role of these ODL precursors may offer scientists a path toward designing materials with the desired technologically relevant properties, which typically emerge at low temperatures.

“Not surprisingly, this low-temperature regime is well studied,” said Emil Bozin, a physicist in the X-ray Scattering Group of the Condensed Matter Physics and Materials Science (CMPMS) Division at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory. “Meanwhile, the high-temperature regime remains largely unexplored because it’s associated with relatively high symmetry, which is considered uninteresting.”

An international collaboration led by RMIT has achieved record-high electron doping in a layered ferromagnet, causing magnetic phase transition with significant promise for future electronics.

Control of magnetism (or spin directions) by electric voltage is vital for developing future, low-energy high-speed nano-electronic and spintronic devices, such as spin-orbit torque devices and spin field-effect transistors. Ultra-high-charge, doping-induced magnetic phase transition in a layered ferromagnet allows promising applications in antiferromagnetic spintronic devices.

A team of scientists from NUST MISIS and MIPT have developed a new platform for realization of ultra-strong photon-to-magnon coupling. The proposed system is on-chip and is based on thin-film hetero-structures with superconducting, ferromagnetic and insulating layers.

This achievement addresses a problem that has been on the agenda of research teams for the last 10 years, and opens new opportunities in implementing quantum technologies.

A China-Australia collaboration has, for the first time, illustrated that Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interactions (DMI), an antisymmetric exchange vital for forming various chiral spin textures such as skyrmions, can be induced in a layered material tantalum-sulfide (TaS₂) by intercalating iron atoms, and can further be tuned by gate-induced proton intercalation.

Magnetic-spin interactions that allow spin-manipulation by electrical control allow potential applications in energy-efficient spintronic devices.

A study led by researchers at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities has found a property of magnetic materials that may enable engineers to develop more efficient spintronic devices in the future.

One of the main obstacles to developing better spintronic devices is an effect called “damping,” which is where the magnetic energy essentially escapes from the materials, making them less efficient. Traditionally, scientists have ascribed this property to the interaction between the electron’s spin and its motion. However, the team led by the University of Minnesota has proven that there is another factor – magnetoelastic coupling, i.e. the interaction between electron spin or magnetism and sound particles.

An international research team, including scientists from the Institute of Molecular Science of the University of Valencia (ICMol), has discovered how to control spin waves using light in an insulating material formed by magnetic layers. This could be a step towards a new generation of devices that store and transport information in a highly efficient way and with very low consumption.

If throwing a stone into a pond generates a wave that propagates over the surface of the water, something similar happens when the action of a magnet or a pulse of light, for example, propagates over a magnetic material – made up of small magnets (spines) connected to each other – and produces what is known as a ‘spin wave’.