EurekAlert August 24, 2020
An international team of researchers (Germany, France, Japan, Czech Republic) has shown that information storage in antiferromagnetic materials is fundamentally possible, and how efficiently information can be written electrically in insulating antiferromagnetic materials. For their measurements, the researchers used the antiferromagnetic insulator Cobalt oxide CoO – a model material that paves the way for applications. The result: Currents are much more efficient than magnetic fields to manipulate antiferromagnetic materials. This discovery opens the way toward applications ranging from smart cards that cannot be erased by external magnetic fields to ultrafast computers – thanks to the superior properties of antiferromagnets over ferromagnets…read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE
The microscopic moments in antiferromagnetic materials have alternated orientation, in contrast to the ones of ferromagnets. Credit: ill./©: Lorenzo Baldrati, JGU