A new material could aid in the development of extremely energy efficient IT applications. The material was discovered by an international research team in cooperation with Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU). The electrons at the oxide interface of the material possess special properties which drastically increase the conversion rate of spin current to charge current. This is the foundation for future spintronic applications. The new material has been found to be more efficient than any previously investigated material, the team writes in the journal "Nature Materials".

Electric current flows through all technical devices. Heat is generated and energy is lost. Spintronics explores new approaches to solving this issue that utilise a special property of electrons: spin. This is a type of intrinsic angular momentum of electrons that generates a magnetic torque and it is what causes magnetism. The idea behind spintronics is: If spin current flows through a material instead of an electrical charge, no heat is generated and significantly less energy is lost in the device. "However, this approach still requires an electric current for the device to work. Therefore, an efficient spin-to-charge conversion is necessary for this novel technology to work," explains Professor Ingrid Mertig, a physicist at MLU. Her research group is part of the international research team that discovered the new material. The work was led by the French physicist Dr Manuel Bibes, who conducts research at the renowned institute Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) - Thales.

The group investigated the interface between two oxides. "The two substances are actually insulators and are non-conductive. However, a kind of two-dimensional electron gas forms at their interface, which behaves like a metal, conducts current and can convert charge current into spin current with extremely high efficiency," explains Mertig. Dr Annika Johansson and Börge Göbel, two members of her research group, provided the theoretical explanation for this unusual observation. According to the researchers, the new material is significantly more efficient than any other known material. This could pave the way for the development of new, energy-saving computers.

• Press release of Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg
• The paper in Nature Materials    

Advances in IT technologies are hampered by the ever increasing demand for energy and by fundamental limits on miniaturization. Energy dissipation mostly going into heating up the environment is also a challenge. A new type of spin waves recently discovered by physicists at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) and Lanzhou University in China may serve to overcome these obstacles. In the latest edition of the scientific journal "Nature Communications", they describe a novel type of spin waves that can be used to transmit and process information with considerably higher efficiency and lower energy consumption.

Conventional IT applications are based on electric charge currents. "This results inevitably in energy losses heating up the environment" said MLU physicist Professor Jamal Berakdar. The researcher added that more energy is needed and also dissipated to operate more powerful and compact devices. Thus, it is very challenging to maintain the pace of advancement based on charge-current based technology.

• Press release of the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg
• Link to the article in Nature Communications