Altermagnets, Spintronics & Valleytronics

Altermagnets, Spintronics & Valleytronics Latest News

A research team led by the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) has reported the first-ever experimental observation of a two-dimensional layered room-temperature altermagnet.

About Altermagnets

• Altermagnets are a new class of antiferromagnetic materials that exhibit momentum-dependent spin splitting without requiring spin–orbit coupling (SOC) or net magnetization.
• This novel spin splitting mechanism arises due to exchange interactions between crystal-symmetry-connected magnetic sublattices, creating a phenomenon known as C-paired spin-valley locking (SVL).
• Altermagnetism combines the long spin lifetimes and magnetic stability of antiferromagnets with the advantage of spin-split energy bands, making them ideal for spintronic applications.

About Spintronics

• Spintronics (short for spin transport electronics) is a field of electronics that utilises both the intrinsic spin and charge of electrons to store, process, and transfer data.
• It offers faster processing speeds, higher integration densities, and reduced energy consumption.
• Key spintronic devices include spin transistors, spin diodes, spin filters, spin RAM, and spin logic gates.
• In contrast to conventional electronics, which rely solely on electron charge, spintronics provides an additional degree of freedom—electron spin, enabling energy-efficient computation.
• Valleytronics is an emerging field that uses valley degrees of freedom (minima in energy bands) to store and manipulate data. Like spin, valley indices can be used as binary information units, potentially offering faster and denser data processing.

Altermagnets, Spintronics & Valleytronics FAQs

Q1: What are altermagnets?
Ans: Altermagnets are a newly discovered class of magnetic materials that combine antiferromagnetic order with strong spin polarisation, allowing spin control without net magnetisation.

Q2: What is spintronics?
Ans: Spintronics (spin transport electronics) is a technology that exploits the intrinsic spin of electrons and their associated magnetic moment in solid-state devices.

Q3: What is valleytronics?
Ans: Valleytronics is a branch of electronics that exploits the valley degree of freedom (energy extremes in electronic band structures) for information encoding, offering an alternative to charge-based systems.

Source: PHY