“Intel is great at scaling things and at the nuts and bolts of making a technology actually work at the super-small scale of a computer chip,” Heron said. But the researchers are working with Intel to find ways to shrink them to a more useful size that will be compatible with the company’s magnetoelectric spin-orbit device (or MESO) program, one goal of which is to push magnetoelectric devices into the mainstream. The magnetoelectric devices made in the study are several microns in size - large by computing standards. “And ‘spray painting’ the material onto a surface that deforms slightly when a voltage is applied also made it easy to test its magnetostrictive properties.” Researchers are working with Intel’s MESO program “Low-temperature molecular-beam epitaxy is an extremely useful technique - it’s a little bit like spray painting with individual atoms,” Heron said. This way, Heron and his team were able to double the amount of gallium in the material, netting a tenfold increase in magnetostriction compared to unmodified iron-gallium alloys. So the research team used a process called low-temperature molecular-beam epitaxy to essentially freeze atoms in place, preventing them from forming an ordered structure as more gallium was added. But those increases level off and eventually begin to fall as the higher amounts of gallium begin to form an ordered atomic structure. Ordinarily, explains Heron, the magnetostriction of iron-gallium alloy increases as more gallium is added. But Heron’s team has found a way to coax high levels of magnetostriction from inexpensive iron and gallium. ![]() Most of today’s magnetostrictive materials use rare-earth elements, which are too scarce and costly to be used in the quantities needed for computing devices. “And more magnetostriction means that a chip can do the same job with less energy.” Cheaper magnetoelectric devices with a tenfold improvement “A key to making magnetoelectric devices work is finding materials whose electrical and magnetic properties are linked.” Heron said. Because they don’t require a steady stream of electricity, as today’s chips do, they use a fraction of the energy. Tiny pulses of electricity cause them to expand or contract slightly, flipping their magnetic field from positive to negative or vice versa. Magnetoelectric devices use magnetic fields instead of electricity to store the digital ones and zeros of binary data. The team is led by U-M materials science and engineering professor John Heron and includes researchers from Intel Cornell University University of California, Berkeley University of Wisconsin Purdue University and elsewhere. Made of a combination of iron and gallium, the material is detailed in a paper published today (May 12, 2021) in Nature Communication. Magnetoelectric chips could make everything from massive data centers to cell phones far more energy efficient, slashing the electricity requirements of the world’s computing infrastructure. The property could be key to a new generation of computing devices called magnetoelectrics. ![]() Magnetostriction, which causes the buzz of fluorescent lights and electrical transformers, occurs when a material’s shape and magnetic field are linked - that is, a change in shape causes a change in magnetic field.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |