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Step into an unseen realm that’s incredibly small — the nanoscale. Imagine reducing a single hair strand by a million times; that’s where you find yourself. Here, atoms and molecules act as the creators, giving rise to new properties that have yet to be understood — until now.
Enter a concealed universe so minute it’s nearly unthinkable — the nanoscale. Visualize a hair strand shrunk down a millionfold, and you’ve arrived. In this realm, atoms and molecules are adept constructors, generating novel properties that remained unexamined until recently.
Recent research led by Deepak Singh and Carsten Ullrich from the University of Missouri’s College of Arts and Science, together with their teams of students and postdoctoral researchers, unveiled a pivotal discovery at the nanoscale: a new kind of quasiparticle found across all magnetic materials, regardless of their strength or temperature.
This revelation disrupts previous understandings of magnetism, indicating that it’s far more dynamic than was originally perceived.
“Consider the bubbles that rise in sparkling water or carbonated beverages,” Ullrich, the Curators’ Distinguished Professor of Physics and Astronomy, explained. “These quasiparticles are akin to those bubbles, and we discovered they can move freely and at astonishing speeds.”
This insight has the potential to pave the way for a new class of electronics that are not just faster and smarter, but also more energy-efficient. However, scientists must first explore how this discovery fits into those advancements.
One scientific area that stands to gain significantly from this breakthrough is spintronics, also known as “spin electronics.” Unlike conventional electronics, which rely on the electrical charge of electrons for information storage and processing, spintronics capitalizes on the intrinsic spin of electrons — a characteristic intertwined with their quantum nature, according to Ullrich.
For example, a smartphone battery might last for several hundred hours on a single charge when utilizing spintronics, noted Singh, an associate professor of physics and astronomy focusing on spintronics.
“The spin aspect of these electrons underpins magnetic phenomena,” Singh remarked. “Electrons possess two traits: charge and spin. Instead of relying on traditional charge, we tap into the spinning aspect. This proves to be more efficient, as the spin uses far less energy compared to the charge.”
Singh’s team, which included former graduate student Jiason Guo, conducted the experimental work, leveraging Singh’s extensive experience with magnetic materials to enhance their characteristics. Ullrich’s group, with postdoctoral researcher Daniel Hill, analyzed Singh’s findings and developed models to elucidate the unusual behaviors observed under sophisticated spectrometers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
The current research builds on previous work published in Nature Communications, where they first documented this dynamic behavior at the nanoscale.
The study titled “Emergent topological quasiparticle kinetics in constricted nanomagnets” appeared in Physical Review Research, a journal of the American Physical Society. This research received support from grants from the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences (DE-SC0014461 and DE-SC0019109). The views expressed are those of the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect the official stance of the funding agency.
Guo, presently a postdoctoral fellow at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and Hill serve as the first and second authors of the study. The research team from Mizzou included Valeria Lauter, Laura Stingaciu, and Piotr Zolnierczuk, scientists affiliated with Oak Ridge.
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