New storage and information technology requires new higher performance materials. One of these materials is yttrium iron garnet, which has special magnetic properties. Thanks to a new process, it can now be transferred to any material. Developed by physicists, the method could advance the production of smaller, faster and more energy-efficient components for data storage and information processing.
New storage and information technology requires new higher performance materials. One of these materials is yttrium iron garnet, which has special magnetic properties. Thanks to a new process, it can now be transferred to any material. Developed by physicists at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU), the method could advance the production of smaller, faster and more energy-efficient components for data storage and information processing. The physicists have published their results in the journal Applied Physics Letters.
Magnetic materials play a major role in the development of new storage and information technologies. Magnonics is an emerging field of research that studies spin waves in crystalline layers. Spin is a type of intrinsic angular momentum of a particle that generates a magnetic moment. The deflection of the spin can propagate waves in a solid body. "In magnonic components, electrons would not have to move to process information, which means they would consume much less energy," explains Professor Georg Schmidt from the Institute of Physics at MLU. This would also make them smaller and faster than previous technologies.
But until now, it has been very costly to produce the materials needed for this. Yttrium iron garnet (YIG) is often used because it has the right magnetic properties. "The problem so far has been that the very thin, high-quality layers that are required can only be produced on a specific substrate and cannot be detached," explains Schmidt. The substrate itself has unfavourable electromagnetic properties.
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