IBhubaneswar: Researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Bhubaneswar, in collaboration with Virginia Commonwealth University, US, have theoretically predicted a new two-dimensional material that could one day help make electronic devices smaller, faster and less power hungry.The material, a three-atom-thick layer of iron chloride (FeCl₃), is predicted to exhibit an extremely rare form of magnetism called i-wave altermagnetism. The study, led by Dr Manish Kumar Mohanta, ANRF Ramanujan Faculty in the department of physics of IIT-Bhubaneswar, has been published in Nano Letters, an international journal in nanoscience and nanotechnology.Researchers said altermagnetism is a relatively new area of research in physics that combines some useful properties of conventional magnets and antiferromagnets. One of its key advantages is that altermagnetic materials produce almost no stray magnetic fields. This could allow electronic components to be packed more closely without causing unwanted magnetic interference.“At the same time, these materials can generate and control spin-polarised currents. Unlike conventional electronics, which mainly relies on the electric charge of electrons to carry information, spintronics also uses the intrinsic spin of electrons. This could potentially make future electronic devices faster while consuming less energy,” Mohanta said.The IIT Bhubaneswar-led study predicts that the FeCl₃ monolayer has i-wave symmetry, a particularly complex and rare form of altermagnetism. According to the researchers, this property could offer greater control over electron spins, making the material a promising candidate for future spintronic technologies.The findings, he said, could have implications for technologies such as high-density memory, spin-based transistors and terahertz communication, as well as emerging quantum technologies. In the longer term, such materials could contribute to the development of more compact and energy-efficient computing and electronic systems.“With the discovery, we expand the growing family of altermagnetic materials and provide a promising platform for exploring practical spintronic devices that could be faster, more compact and significantly more energy-efficient than existing technologies,” Mohanta said.However, the researchers have predicted these properties through theoretical calculations. The material and its properties will need to be tested experimentally before it can be used to develop actual electronic devices, they said.
