Data is growing at a staggering pace, pushing charge-based microelectronics, such as smartphones and laptops, to their physical limits. Spintronics—technology that uses electron spin rather than charge—avoids the limits of conventional electronics by switching information with very little energy, holding states without power and enabling extremely dense data storage.
Electrons possess a property called spin, which gives each one a tiny magnetic field that can point up or down, like a miniature compass needle. Because these magnetic orientations encode information, advancing spintronics requires controlling electron spins at the nanoscale—the scale of structures thousands of times thinner than a human hair.
Van der Waals magnets—ultrathin materials that can be peeled into layers only a few atoms thick—are ideal building blocks for spintronic devices, which rely on controlling electron spins and magnetic states at very small scales. Van der Waals magnets offer a powerful new platform for next-generation electronics and data storage technologies.
In recent research, scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory reveal how magnetic domains behave inside these 2D van der Waals magnets. This finding provides a roadmap for designing and tuning future spin-based technologies.
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