Researchers find ways for broader design & engineering of reconfigurable magnonic crystals that can transfer information more efficiently than electrons

What is the News?

Researchers have found ways for broader design and engineering of reconfigurable functional magnonic crystals. This can show the way for magnon based computing systems and bring about a paradigm shift in computing and communication devices.

Background

Electrons, the lightest known particles almost two thousand times lighter than the proton, are carriers of information in all “electronic” devices. 

As the electrons drift in the semiconducting device of the CPU, the signal moves almost at the speed of light. However, this drift generates heat in the device which has to be fanned out of the CPU.

To overcome this drawback of heat generation, scientists around the world are looking for materials in which magnons can be used to transport information without the generation of heat. 

What are Magnons?

Magnons are particle avatars of spin waves which can ripple through a lattice of tiny ferromagnetic particles of nano dimensions. 

Since magnons are quasiparticles, their movement through the material does not generate any heat. 

The promise held by magnons has led to magnonics, a budding research field in nanoscience that deals with the excitation, propagation, control and detection of magnons or spin waves through periodic magnetic media.

What have the researchers developed?

Researchers have merged magnons with “Artificial Spin Ice” to transport information without the generation of heat. 

Note: Artificial spin ice or ASI are metamaterials made up of coupled nanomagnets arranged on different lattices. The tag ‘ice’ comes from the similarity in molecular structure with tetrahedron shaped ice crystals in which two hydrogen atoms are close to the central oxygen atom, and two are far.

Moreover, the researchers also studied this merged sample through Brillouin light scattering(BLS). BLS is an inelastic light scattering phenomenon of light quanta photons from quasiparticles like magnons or phonons which can help in understanding spin-wave propagation and dispersion under the influence of an external magnetic field.

Source: The post is based on the article “Researchers find ways for broader design & engineering of reconfigurable magnonic crystals that can transfer information more efficiently than electrons” published in PIB on 4th May 2022.