Monday, August 4, 2025
Science
No Result
View All Result
  • Login
  • HOME
  • SCIENCE NEWS
  • CONTACT US
  • HOME
  • SCIENCE NEWS
  • CONTACT US
No Result
View All Result
Scienmag
No Result
View All Result
Home Science News Technology and Engineering

HKUST and Tsinghua researchers develop mechanism of electrical 180° switching of Néel vector

April 9, 2024
in Technology and Engineering
Reading Time: 3 mins read
0
Figure 1 (a)
66
SHARES
596
VIEWS
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT

A collaborated research team led by The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) and Tsinghua University has theoretically proposed a new mechanism of electrical 180° switching of Néel vector and experimentally realized it in antiferromagnetic materials with spin-splitting band structure featuring the C-paired spin-valley locking, also named as altermagnet. The team also demonstrated the material’s capability to manipulate Néel vector, paving the way for the manufacturing of ultrafast memory devices.

Figure 1 (a)

Credit: HKUST

A collaborated research team led by The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) and Tsinghua University has theoretically proposed a new mechanism of electrical 180° switching of Néel vector and experimentally realized it in antiferromagnetic materials with spin-splitting band structure featuring the C-paired spin-valley locking, also named as altermagnet. The team also demonstrated the material’s capability to manipulate Néel vector, paving the way for the manufacturing of ultrafast memory devices.

Antiferromagnetic spintronics has sparked widespread interest due to its enormous potential for creating ultra-dense and ultrafast antiferromagnetic memory that is suitable for modern high-performance information technologies. The electrical 180° switching of the Néel vector is a long-term objective for producing electrically controllable antiferromagnetic memory using opposite Néel vectors as binary “0” and “1”. However, the state-of-art antiferromagnetic switching mechanisms have long been limited for 90° or 120° switching of Néel vector, which unavoidably requires multiple writing channels that contradict ultradense integration. The study of electrical 180° switching of Néel vector makes spin-splitting antiferromagnet a new potential candidate for ultrafast memory.

Specifically, in collinear antiferromagnet, the Néel vector n have two stable states n_+ and n_- with symmetric energy barriers. To leave an asymmetry of energy barriers, the team led by Prof. LIU Junwei, Associate Professor at the Department of Physics at HKUST proposed to exert an external magnetic field to interact with the tiny DMI-induced moment. Then, the damping-like spin-orbit torque [2] can be used to drive Néel vector n to cross the barrier from n_+ to n_- but cannot cross the opposite one (Figure 1a). As shown in Figure 1b, the atomic spin model simulation shows that n can be deterministically switched to state n_+ or n_- in 0.1 ns. Integrating the non-zero Berry curvatures on spin-splitting bands of tight-binding model, the anomalous Hall conductivities show high sensitivity to these two states n_+ and n_-, shown in Figure 1c.

In experiments led by Prof. PAN Feng and Prof. SONG Cheng, from the School of Materials Science and Engineering at Tsinghua University, the good cyclic performance of fabricated antiferromagnetic Mn5Si3 thin film is shown in Figure 1d, which means the current-driven 180° switching of Néel vector is robust and sustainable.

In fact, the team had presented a new theory as C-paired spin-valley locking (SVL) a few years ago in the scientific journal Nature Communications, indicating a new way to induce the magnetization in antiferromagnet and laying the foundation of switching of Néel Vector. Compared to this conventional T-paired SVL materials, the C-paired SVL materials create the spin-splitting bands by the strong exchange coupling between itinerant electrons and local magnetic moments instead of SOC. Furthermore, the spin-splitting valleys are paired with opposite spin directions by preserved crystal symmetry rather than time-reversal symmetry, as shown in Figure 2. In practice, a strain / charge current can be exerted to slightly break or affect the crystal symmetry and therefore induce a net magnetization / noncollinear spin current.

Based on the theoretical and experimental study of electrical 180° switching and readout of the Néel vector in Mn5Si3, electrical-controllable AFM memory devices are available with High efficiency and high reproducibility. This basic work achieved the information transformation between charge and spin degrees of freedom in antiferromagnet, paving way for the rapid development of spintronics in electronics industry. With its potential application as a storage device, such as in a computer hard drive, the material presents notable benefits including enhanced read and write speeds, as well as increased storage density.

In the future, Prof. Liu hopes that the team will explore more switching mechanisms and the underlying physics, and try to search for more suitable material platforms with higher efficiency.

The study was recently published in the scientific journal Science Advances, the corresponding authors were Prof. Pan Feng and Prof. Song Cheng at Tsinghua University, and Prof. Liu Junwei at HKUST, and the first authors were postgraduate students HAN Lei and FU Xizhi at Tsinghua University and HKUST respectively.



Journal

Science Advances

DOI

10.1126/sciadv.adn0479

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Electrical 180° switching of Néel vector in spin-splitting antiferromagnet

Article Publication Date

29-Jan-2024

Share26Tweet17
Previous Post

Peregrine falcons expose lasting harms of flame retardant use

Next Post

Helping robots make a better first impression

Related Posts

blank
Technology and Engineering

Toxicity of Micro- and Nanoplastics in Lung Cells

August 4, 2025
blank
Technology and Engineering

Breakthrough in Genome Editing: Scientists Attain Megabase-Scale Precision in Eukaryotic Cells

August 4, 2025
blank
Medicine

Real-Time In-Situ Magnetization for Soft Robotics

August 4, 2025
blank
Technology and Engineering

Ultrafast Metasurface Switching via Optical Symmetry Breaking

August 4, 2025
blank
Technology and Engineering

Multimodal Dataset Advances Precision Oncology in Head, Neck

August 4, 2025
blank
Technology and Engineering

Why Biofouling Fails to Move Microplastics Vertically

August 4, 2025
Next Post

Helping robots make a better first impression

  • Mothers who receive childcare support from maternal grandparents show more parental warmth, finds NTU Singapore study

    Mothers who receive childcare support from maternal grandparents show more parental warmth, finds NTU Singapore study

    27529 shares
    Share 11008 Tweet 6880
  • University of Seville Breaks 120-Year-Old Mystery, Revises a Key Einstein Concept

    939 shares
    Share 376 Tweet 235
  • Bee body mass, pathogens and local climate influence heat tolerance

    640 shares
    Share 256 Tweet 160
  • Researchers record first-ever images and data of a shark experiencing a boat strike

    506 shares
    Share 202 Tweet 127
  • Warm seawater speeding up melting of ‘Doomsday Glacier,’ scientists warn

    310 shares
    Share 124 Tweet 78
Science

Embark on a thrilling journey of discovery with Scienmag.com—your ultimate source for cutting-edge breakthroughs. Immerse yourself in a world where curiosity knows no limits and tomorrow’s possibilities become today’s reality!

RECENT NEWS

  • Kushneria Pigments Trigger Cancer Cell Death via BAX/BCL-2
  • Alpha-Synuclein Levels Unnecessary for Parkinson’s Pathology
  • Green Populism: Europe’s Environmental Politics Shift
  • Toxicity of Micro- and Nanoplastics in Lung Cells

Categories

  • Agriculture
  • Anthropology
  • Archaeology
  • Athmospheric
  • Biology
  • Bussines
  • Cancer
  • Chemistry
  • Climate
  • Earth Science
  • Marine
  • Mathematics
  • Medicine
  • Pediatry
  • Policy
  • Psychology & Psychiatry
  • Science Education
  • Social Science
  • Space
  • Technology and Engineering

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 5,184 other subscribers

© 2025 Scienmag - Science Magazine

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
No Result
View All Result
  • HOME
  • SCIENCE NEWS
  • CONTACT US

© 2025 Scienmag - Science Magazine

Discover more from Science

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading