This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Today's computer technology, based on silicon chips, is slowly reaching its physical limits. Components cannot be miniaturized indefinitely, and clock speeds cannot be increased indefinitely.
At the same time, huge AI data centers are being built in many places, and these consume an immense amount of electricity. This is why scientists around the world are searching for novel materials that can replace or complement silicon technology and consume significantly less electricity. Using a combination of X-ray techniques, a research team at PSI has now been able to break down in detail the rapid interplay among different excitations in such a material—electronic, magnetic and lattice excitations.
The study is published in the journal Nature Communications. The computer technology of the future could become much more efficient and faster if we succeeded in effectively controlling the rapid flip-flop movements of electron spins in solids. This would make it possible to build ultrafast logic components such as transistors.
In today's computer chips, electrons flow through the material, which causes power losses and generates waste heat. If, instead, the electrons remained stationary and only their spins were manipulated, spin waves could be excited to carry information—much like a wave in a soccer stadium: It's not the people who move through the stadium, but rather everyone raises their arms in turn. This field is therefore also called spintronics—from "spin" and "electronics." It makes use of tiny collective spin excitations known as magnons.
The name derives from the fact that spins act like atomic compass needles and are linked to a magnetic field, through which they can be excited and read out. "We have now investigated the dynamics of these excitations and, in doing so, have been able to reveal in unprecedented detail all important aspects that happen in the material with a microscopic view," says Hiroki Ueda, who led the project at the Paul Scherrer Institute. Until now, it had been possible to study various aspects of how such spin waves behave in the material.
However, it was not possible to obtain a coherent picture, since the various analytical techniques could only capture a portion of the microscopic phenomena at a time. "We are particularly interested in the interrelationship between the various excitations in the material," explains Ueda. In addition to magnons, the vibrations of atoms in the crystal lattice—known as phonons—also play an important role.
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