Modern computers are essentially oceans of electrical current, streams of charge that flow to hold and process data. But as these currents ramp up to accommodate escalating demand, they dissipate additional heat, draw more and more power, and resist further reductions in size.
Fortunately, spintronics offers a potential solution: electrons are not just carriers but also small spinning tops! Exploiting electron spin could mean faster switching devices, lower heat generation, and the integration of memory and logic on a single platform.
Now, scientists led by Northwestern’s James Rondinelli have discovered a new kind of material, ternary nitrides, that possess an unusual combination of Ferroelectricity, magnetism, and unique spin properties. The combination of these properties is unusual and suggests the potential for components that are faster, smaller, cheaper, and more energy-efficient than available technologies.
These materials could provide magnetoelectric and/or spintronic devices that retain information without constant power, switch states within nanoseconds, and reduce unwanted heat dissipation. The vast implications that roll from large-scale data centers to mobile devices signal great promise.
They could form the basis for new kinds of memory, storage, and circuitry, and ultimately be incorporated into all quantum and high-performance computing technology in the near future.
Rondinelli said, “Ferroelectricity and magnetism rarely coexist in a single material, and when they do, the cross-coupling between them becomes a design lever. Our ultimate goal is to use those levers to write and read spin states with voltage pulses to slash the energy cost of a switching event by orders of magnitude compared to conventional transistors.”
Ferroelectric materials work similarly to tiny batteries contained within crystals; they inherently have a separation of positive and negative charges that an applied electric field can switch. Whenever this “charge-flipping” mechanism is associated with magnetic behavior, it enables electromagnetic control of magnetic states using electrical signals rather than large physical magnetic fields.
This is the challenge of multiferroics, compounds with coexisting electric and magnetic functionality. But the problem is that they are usually not effective at room temperature.
Now, the research team has made discoveries about a family of nitride compounds that may evade this limitation. They engineered materials with electric and magnetic properties that coexist and remain stable at or near ambient temperatures by strategically selecting constituent elements and arranging them.
Zinc- or magnesium-based contents of some nitride materials are great for maintaining and reversing electric polarization; manganese-containing ones show good magnetic properties. They are alternamagnetic spin-splitting compounds with semiconducting properties.
They achieved this type of alternating magnetic support by replacing some of the zinc or magnesium atoms in the manganese-based lattice, retaining strong magnetism and introducing electric polarization. The result is a single material that performs both functions simultaneously.
“Our next step is to team up with material growers and device engineers to test these predictions,” said James Rondinelli. “If it works, the impact could be huge. Nitrides already form the backbone of critical electronics in consumer and defense tech. Adding magnetoelectric control to that family could mean smarter, more efficient devices, without reinventing the manufacturing process.”
Journal Reference:
- Steven M. Baksa, Lin-Ding Yuan, Stephan Wilson, and James M. Rondinelli. Ferroelectricity in Antiferromagnetic Wurtzite Nitrides. Advanced Functional Materials. DOI: 10.1002/adfm.202525545
