A material thinner than a human hair may foster faster computing devices that demand less energy and store more data, according to a multi-institutional team led by researchers in the Penn State College of Earth and Mineral Sciences and supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF).
Published in the journal Advanced Materials, the novel material has complex magnetic properties that can promote efficiency in how electronics function, said lead author Saeed S. I. Almishal, an assistant professor of materials and engineering and a faculty member in the Materials Research Institute.
For more than a decade, the research team built on the 2015 introduction of advanced ceramic materials known as high-entropy oxides, or HEOs, pioneered by co-author Jon-Paul Maria, interim head of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and Dorothy Pate Enrich Professor of Materials Science and Engineering. The team created a fabrication method to generate the new film, which is itself an HEO.
"A new generation of advanced electronics will require more efficient control of the internal electrical and magnetic signals that make everyday devices work," Almishal said. "We developed this new material with distinct properties that can help engineers refine magnetic functions to drive greater device speeds with less power consumption."
HEOs stand out for a distinct ability to unite several diverse elements at the atomic level in single crystalline structures. These oxides set the groundwork for a wide range of new materials useful in science, engineering and energy applications, Almishal explained.
For this latest advancement, Almishal and colleagues focused on chemical disorder within the perfectly ordered crystal structures, an intersection the group called "anomalous crystallinity" - a new scientific definition in the field. The team experimented with this crystallinity to form layered interfaces and generate a novel material sciences phenomenon in magnetism.
The phenomenon assembles disparate atoms to drive magnetic signals, which require less energy than electrical current to transmit and store data within electronic devices, Almishal said. A combination of electrical current and magnetism enable electronic device function and data retention.
Historically, magnetism has been central to how devices hold information. Elevating the role of magnetic signals can reduce device reliance on electrical current, improve data storage and reduce overall energy consumption, as Almishal noted.
Perfecting fabrication of the material - a thin film - took a decade, a process that he compared to crafting a paint and then applying it to a wall. The long effort in collaboration with Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee merged material science and physics to create the layered interfaces inside the film.
Researchers measured magnetic phenomena along these interfaces, developed experiments to refine the film and made it practically applicable to be used inside electronic devices in future efforts. According to Almishal, this work and a 2025 paper they published in Advanced Science represent a first step toward bringing together magnonics, a physics subfield in magnetics, with spintronics, which centers the spinning behavior of electrons and their magnetic capabilities.
Blending those areas with Penn State's established strength in more traditional electronics represents a gamechanger in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Almishal said.
"It's a new direction for us," said Almishal, who is developing the first magnetics laboratory in the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences. "We soon will have state-of-the-art capabilities for a wide array of magnetism testing."
The emerging Quantum and Magnetic Materials Measurements Lab is part of the Almishal Research Group in quantum materials science, housed in the Materials Research Institute in the Millennium Science Complex. Undergraduate and graduate students are part of the group; the lab is expected to feature a range of tools to explore magnetic properties, including under varying heat conditions.
Almishal said the team leading the new material plans to collaborate with industry on further development of the film for use in everyday consumer electronics. Maria said the work offers potential for much greater efficiency in large-scale data centers, which consume significant power.
"Such materials offer a potential approach to achieving high efficiency - 10 to 100 times more efficient - in data centers," Maria said, noting the efficiency stems largely from the use of magnetism.
The progress speaks to the critical value and snowball effect of basic research, Maria added. Federal money, including from the U.S. Navy and the NSF, helped spur the cultivation of HEOs starting more than a decade ago.
That early effort began not with a specific endpoint but with a general desire to understand advanced possibilities in metallurgy, the science of creating alloys and other metal components, said Almishal, whom Maria advised as a doctoral student.
"Early-stage experiments give rise to the landmark advancements that make impactful change," Maria said. "It's important that we recognize the long genesis of the work."
Collaborators on the paper in Advanced Materials include Associate Professor Nasim Alem and doctoral student Sai Venkata Gayathri Ayyagar in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering in the Penn State College of Earth and Mineral Sciences; Professor Zhiqiang Mao, Professor Binghai Yan and graduate student Aaron Pearre in the Department of Physics in the University's Eberly College of Science; and Matthew Furst, who earned a bachelor of science in materials science and engineering from Penn State earlier this year and is now pursuing a doctorate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The Spallation Neutron Source at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory also contributed to the work.
The research received funding support from the Penn State Materials Research Science and Engineering Center for Nanoscale Science under NSF award number 2011839. This content is the sole responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily reflect the views of the funders.
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