Researchers just identified a new 2D insulators with ferromagnetic properties

Collaborating scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory, Brookhaven National Laboratory, and Princeton University have discovered a new layered ferromagnetic semiconductor, a rare type of material that holds great promise for next-generation electronic technologies.

As the name implies, semiconductors are the Goldilocks of electrically conductive materials-- not a metal, and not an insulator, but a “just-right” in-between whose conducting properties can be altered and customized in ways that create the basis for the world’s modern electronic capabilities. Especially rare are the ones closer to an insulator than to a metal.

“Being able to exfoliate these materials down into 2D layers gives us new opportunities to find unusual properties that are potentially useful to electronic technology advances.” “It’s sort of like getting a new shape of Lego bricks. The more unique pieces you have, the cooler the stuff you can build.” The advantage of ferromagnetism in a semiconductor is that electronic properties become spin-dependent. Electrons align their spins along internal magnetization.

Read more at Ames Laboratory

Image Credit: Ames Laboratory

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