Atomic sandwiches: New generation of computers could make 100X greener read more at here www.spinonews.com/index.php/item/1150-atomic-sandwiches-new-generation-of-computers-could-make-100x-greener
Scientists, have designed new 'atomic sandwiches', materials that could lead to the next generation of computing devices Known as a magneto electric multiferroic material.
The new material sandwiches together individual layers of atoms, producing a thin film with magnetic polarity that can be flipped from positive to negative or vice versa with small pulses of electricity.
In the future, device-makers could use this property to store digital 0's and 1's, the binary backbone that underpins computing devices.
Room-temperature multiferroics are a hotly pursued goal in the electronics field because they require much less power to read and write data than today's semiconductor-based devices.
In addition, their data does not vanish when the power is shut off. Those properties could enable devices that require only brief pulses of electricity instead of the constant stream that's needed for current electronics, using an estimated 100 times less energy.
To create the new material, researchers started with thin, atomically precise films of hexagonal lutetium iron oxide (LuFeO3), a material known to be a robust ferroelectric, but not strongly magnetic.
Lutetium iron oxide consists of alternating monolayers of lutetium oxide and iron oxide. Then, researchers used a technique called molecular-beam epitaxy to add one extra monolayer of iron oxide to every 10 atomic repeats of the single-single monolayer pattern.
Darrell Schlom, senior author of the study, said, we were essentially spray painting individual atoms of iron, lutetium and oxygen to achieve a new atomic structure that exhibits stronger magnetic properties.
The result was a new material that combines a phenomenon in lutetium oxide called “planar rumpling" with the magnetic properties of iron oxide to achieve multiferroic properties at room temperature.
Heron explains that the lutetium exhibits atomic-level displacements called rumples. Visible under an electron microscope, the rumples enhance the magnetism in the material, allowing it to persist at room temperature.
The rumples can be applying an electric field, and are enough to nudge the magnetic field in the neighboring layers of iron oxide from positive to negative or vice versa, creating a material whose magnetic properties can be controlled with electricity a "magneto electric multiferroic."
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