According to a press release from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH), perfectly inverting complex structures is of great technical importance. Active noise reduction has been used in earphones and luxury cars in recent years. It is achieved by emitting sound waves that are exactly opposite to those of the disturbing noise. Researchers now hope to apply this principle of perfect inversion to other technologies. At ETH, they have been successful with the magnetic structure of a material.
The team used multiferroics for their experiments. This material is unusual in being both magnetically and electrically polarised. As a consequence, it aligns along both magnetic and electric fields. The physical mechanisms that bring about the magnetic and electric order inside the material are subtly coupled to each other. ETH says this makes it possible to influence the magnetisation not through magnetic fields, as is usually done, but using electric fields. “That’s much more efficient, as one needs electric current to create magnetic fields, and that costs a lot of energy and creates annoying waste heat”, explains researcher Naëmi Leo. As an example, ETH mentions computers, where data has to be constantly written on magnetic hard drives and multiferroics could be the key materials for significant energy savings.
ETH boasts that it is an international leader in multiferroics research. In further experiments, the researchers discovered that the material has other unexpected properties. For instance, they were also able to invert the electric polarization of the material with the magnetic field. ETH rates this as “further proof that multiferroics still hold many surprises” for the researchers.
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