Ferromagnetic material could change electronics

Superheroic multiferroics.

Boffins at the Argonne National University, an organisation that carries out research for the US Department of Energy, have discovered materials that could have far reaching implications for the electronics industry.

Multiferroic materials are unusual in that they show both magnetism and polar order, and much of the work in this field has been theoretical up until now.

Based on Argonne scientist Craig Fennie's principles of microscopic material design, a collaborative effort between the National Lab and a group of universities has brought the mainstream use of multiferroics in consumer electronics a step closer using a compound of Iron and Titanium Oxide.

"We were able to take the theory and, through targeted synthesis and measurement, prove that FeTiO3 has both weak ferromagnetism and ferroelectricity, just as Craig predicted," Argonne scientist John Mitchell said.

Multiferroics could be used in sensors, actuators and mutlifunctional devices acting as magentic switches when their polarity is reversed, but we'd be very surprised to see them turning up in the next generation of Apple Ipods as Argonne's brilliantly named PR chap Brock Cooper has suggested.

It's in the field of electro-magnetic memory where these materials may find a home in the coming years. Memory chips based on multiferroics could theoretically offer static memory that doesn't require constant refreshing, holds data over loss of power and is fast to both write and read... the holy grail of computer memory.