An international team of researchers including physicists here in Durham have made a breakthrough that could help make our phones and computers faster and more energy efficient.
The physicists have for the first time detected magnons at the nanometre scale, magnetic spin waves that travel through a material without carrying any conventional electrical current. Magnons can be used to encode and carry data faster than the electrical signals currently used in personal electronic devices.
Mapping the magnons
The research was led by the University of York, UK, the SuperSTEM laboratory in Daresbury, UK, the University of Uppsala, in Sweden and also involved Durham, and the University of Washington, USA.
The breakthrough was to utilise a high energy and spatial resolution electron microscope to directly detect and map the magnons spectroscopically, within a nickel oxide crystal with extreme precision.
This detection had been predicted but previously had not been proven.
Scientists and technologists previously had limited means to test how the magnons behave at the smallest possible length-scales, down to single atoms – a crucial piece of information given the push to make devices smaller.
Durham researchers performed one of the first calculations on the magnon spectroscopic signal, a crucial step to detecting them experimentally in the electron microscope.
What next?
Professor Quentin Ramasse, Director of SuperSTEM, the UK National Research Facility for Advanced Microscopy, where the experiment was conducted, called the development a major leap for electron microscopy, and a world-first.
The team now hope to move beyond proof of concept towards gaining a comprehensive understanding of magnons in other material systems, to inform practical device applications.
