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Researchers at the University of Delaware have revealed a surprising electrical link between magnetic waves and measurable voltages inside certain materials — a finding that could reshape how future computer chips move information. By showing that magnons can generate electric polarization, the team points to a new route for ultrafast, energy-efficient computing that avoids the heat losses of conventional electronics.
How a Magnetic Wave Becomes an Electric Signal
In everyday electronics, information rides on moving electrons. Those electrons face resistance, scatter, and produce heat — problems that limit speed and energy efficiency. Magnons, in contrast, are collective excitations of electron spins: ripple-like disturbances that travel through a material without net charge flow. Because magnons transport angular momentum rather than electric charge, they can relay information with far less wasted energy.
The University of Delaware group, working within the CHARM center, used advanced theoretical modeling to show that magnons in antiferromagnetic materials can induce an electric polarization as they travel. In antiferromagnets the electron spins alternate up and down, cancelling macroscopic magnetization. That cancellation makes these materials hard to manipulate with ordinary magnetic probes, yet it also enables magnon motion at terahertz frequencies — orders of magnitude faster than typical ferromagnetic spin waves.
From Slings and Slinkies to Terahertz Spin Waves
“Think of spins like springs in a slinky,” said Matthew Doty, senior author and professor of materials science at UD. “If one spin is nudged, the disturbance propagates along the chain — a wave of spin orientation. That wave is a magnon.”
Using simulations, postdoctoral researcher D. Quang To and colleagues examined how magnons propagate when one side of a sample is heated relative to the other, producing a thermal gradient that pushes magnons from hot to cold regions. They also modeled the magnon orbital angular momentum — the circular motion component of the wave — and how that motion couples to the lattice of atoms.
Electric polarization from orbital motion
The team’s math shows that the orbital angular momentum of moving magnons can interact with atomic orbitals in the material to produce a tiny but measurable electric polarization. In other words, a stream of magnons can generate a voltage, offering a direct electrical signature of otherwise hard-to-detect spin waves in antiferromagnets.
Why This Matters for Chips and Computing
Detectable electrical signals from magnons create two major opportunities. First, they provide a practical readout: engineers could sense magnon-based information without relying on bulky magnetic probes. Second, magnons could be steered or modulated by applied electric fields — including the fields of light — enabling electrical control of spin-wave channels. Devices that route information via magnons rather than moving charge could operate at terahertz speeds and consume far less power, potentially overcoming thermal bottlenecks in high-performance computing.
“Our framework gives the community a predictive tool to design materials and devices that exploit magnon transport,” To said. “The possibility of using light’s electric field to push or detect magnons opens many experimental doors.”
Experiment Roadmap and Technical Hurdles
The work, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is theoretical but immediately actionable. The Delaware team is already running experiments to verify their predictions. Key experimental milestones include measuring the predicted voltages in thin antiferromagnetic films, demonstrating control of magnon flow with external electric fields, and coupling light’s orbital angular momentum to spin-wave dynamics.
Challenges remain: the voltages generated by magnons will be small and demand low-noise measurement setups. Material engineering is critical too — not all antiferromagnets will exhibit the same coupling strength between magnon orbital motion and atomic orbitals. But success in these tests could unlock chip architectures where conventional wires are partly replaced by magnonic interconnects.
Related Technologies and Broader Impact
Magnon-based information transfer fits into a larger push toward hybrid spintronic and photonic technologies. Potential benefits include ultrafast data links on chips, lower-power memory and logic elements, and new sensors that combine magnetic and electrical readouts. If researchers can integrate magnon channels with existing semiconductor processes, the result could be practical accelerations for data centers, mobile devices, and specialized processors for AI and high-performance computing.
Expert Insight
“This work neatly bridges two often-disconnected worlds: spin dynamics and measurable electronics,” said Dr. Elena Marquez, a fictional materials physicist and industry consultant. “If experiments confirm the predicted voltages and control pathways, magnonic circuits could become a realistic complement to electron-based designs — especially where heat is the limiting factor.”
Prof. Doty and his collaborators caution that the path from theory to commercial devices is multi-step. Still, the discovery that magnons can produce electrical polarization reframes antiferromagnetic materials from exotic curiosities to practical candidates for next-generation interconnects and components.
As the lab tests proceed, researchers worldwide will watch closely: the ability to detect and steer terahertz spin waves with electrical signals would be a major leap toward faster, leaner computing hardware.
Source: scitechdaily
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