By using a new class of magnetic materials called multiferroics, a team of U.S. researchers were able to improve computer processing forever, according to a University of California press release.
The researchers demonstrated recently that multiferroics can be used to generate spin waves that could increase the power efficiency of many devices, while decreasing wasted heat.
"Spin waves open an opportunity to realize fundamentally new ways of computing while solving some of the key challenges faced by scaling of conventional semiconductor technology, potentially creating a new paradigm of spin-based electronics," principal investigator Kang L. Wang, UCLA's Raytheon Professor of Electrical Engineering and director of the Western Institute of Nanoelectronics (WIN) said in a statement, according to the press release.
In the study, which was published this week, researchers said they hope the discovery makes future devices more energy efficient.
Through multiferroics, researchers were able to lower the energy used for each device while increasing the power efficiency for processing by approximately 1,000 times, according to the study.
The discovery would especially help out laptops and smartphone devices like iPhones that heat up while being used. The heat you feel is essentially wasted energy by the microprocessors found in each device that use electric current.
The current moves the transistors, which act like electronic switches, according to the press release. Its flow across the circuit warms up the device, since the current involves movement of electrons.
Multiferroic magnetic material used by the team lowers the consumption of power by logic devices. Such devices are a type of circuit embedded on a specific computer chip, according to the press release.
By applying alternating voltage, the multiferroic can be turned on off, according to the study. Materials are capable of carrying the power as a cascade through material by the spins of electrons, which has been identified as the spin wave bus process by researchers.
"Electrical control of magnetism without involving charge currents is a fast-growing area of interest in magnetics research," said co-author Pedram Khalili, a UCLA assistant adjunct professor of electrical engineering, according to the study. "It can have major implications for future information processing and data-storage devices, and our recent results are exciting in that context."
Research was published in the journal Applied Physics Letters.
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