American scientists have created the thinnest magnet in the world with a thickness of only one atom
A joint research team from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California at Berkeley has made a real breakthrough and obtained two-dimensional magnetic material.
In this case, the created magnet is only one atom thick and, unlike similar previously created materials, can fully function at room temperature. This unique magnet and its prospects will be discussed.
A new magnet and its prospects
Back in 2017, scientists carried out a study of such a ferromagnetic material as chromium triiodide, which, as it turned out, it is quite possible to grind to a monolayer with a thickness of only one atom, while maintaining its magnetism.
The only drawback was that the resulting material was unstable, and at room temperature it (the material) lost its magnetic properties. And this year scientists have found a solution to this problem.
The scientists started with a mixture of graphene oxide, zinc, and cobalt, which was subsequently baked and then transformed into a layer of zinc oxide interspersed with cobalt atoms.
In this case, the thickness of the resulting material turned out to be equal to one atom. Then the resulting layer was sandwiched between two layers of graphene, which was subsequently burned out, leaving behind a magnetic 2D film.
Further experiments with the material showed that it is quite possible to change the magnetism of the material by changing the cobalt content in the material. So the content of 5-6% of cobalt atoms gave a rather weak magnetism to the material. And already an increase in concentration to 12% made it possible to obtain a sufficiently strong material.
An increase in the concentration of cobalt to 15% has already led to a decrease in the magnetic properties due to the fact that the process of competition of various magnetic states has started inside the material.
In addition, the scientists emphasized that the 2D magnet obtained in this way retained its properties even at temperatures up to 100 degrees Celsius. And with all this, the material also turned out to be possible to bend and give it almost any shape.
The author of the study, Rui Chen, associates this special behavior of the material primarily with the presence of free electrons in zinc oxide.
Where can you use the resulting magnet
First of all, such a unique material can find application in new generations of storage devices. So in modern memory devices, the thinnest magnetic films are used, the thickness of which is hundreds or even thousands of atoms. The use of magnets only one atom thick will make it possible to create devices with a significantly higher density.
In addition, the open material also opens up additional opportunities for studying the world of quantum physics, making it possible to observe individual magnetic atoms, as well as observe how they interact.
So the new material can be useful in the field of spintronics, where the spin of electrons (and not their charge) will be used for storing and processing data. In addition, scientists suggest that a 2D magnet may turn out to be part of a compact device that greatly facilitates these processes.
Scientists have shared the results of the work done on the pages of the journal Nature Communications.
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