{"id":575831,"date":"2026-07-30T17:45:31","date_gmt":"2026-07-30T17:45:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/575831\/"},"modified":"2026-07-30T17:45:31","modified_gmt":"2026-07-30T17:45:31","slug":"shedding-light-on-new-type-of-magnetism-in-quantum-materials-rice-news-news-and-media-relations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/575831\/","title":{"rendered":"Shedding light on new type of magnetism in quantum materials | Rice News | News and Media Relations"},"content":{"rendered":"

Recently, the field of magnetics has been proposed a new class of magnetism called altermagnetism, which could allow for advances in miniaturizing and improving RAM architecture in computers. Rice University\u2019s Ming Yi<\/a>, together with collaborators Bharat Jalan of the University of Minnesota and Milan Radovic of the Paul Scherrer Institute, recently published a paper in Science Advances<\/a> showing that the quantum material ruthenium dioxide potentially displays this new altermagnetism in its ultrathin film form in which the material is prepared as a very thin slice only a few atomic layers thick. <\/p>\n

\"A
\n\u00a0Illustration of strain-induced emergent magnetism in ultrathin RuO2\/TiO2. Possible theoretic altermagnetic spin density is rendered with orange and blue visual effects in the top RuO2 layers using OpenAI ChatGPT. Credit: Rice University\/Yichen Zhang.<\/p>\n

\u201cRuthenium dioxide was one of the first materials to be proposed as an altermagnetic candidate, but studies on its bulk form didn\u2019t return evidence of magnetism,\u201d said Yi, an associate professor of physics and astronomy. \u201cOur research shows that its ultrathin form, on the other hand, may be the key in making it magnetic.\u201d<\/p>\n

To determine the material\u2019s magnetic state, the team measured the spin texture of ruthenium dioxide in its ultrathin film form. Spin texture tells researchers how the magnetic moments of a material \u2014 the spins of its electrons \u2014 arrange themselves in space, which in turn reveals the type of magnetism, if any, the material has. This measurement is done via a technique called spin-resolved angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy. <\/p>\n

\"An
\nYichen Zhang<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter analyzing our measurements, including informing our interpretation with theoretical calculations, we found that, in our experimental conditions, the ruthenium dioxide shows spin textures consistent with unconventional magnetism,\u201d said Yichen Zhang, the first author on the paper and a recent Rice graduate. \u201cThis suggests that bulk and ultrathin ruthenium dioxide, under the right conditions, may have distinctly different magnetic properties.\u201d <\/p>\n

The right conditions to produce altermagnetism-like spins included putting the electron structure of the ultrathin ruthenium dioxide under pressure, called lattice strain. Without the strain, such as in the natural bulk form, the electron spins did not exhibit signs of altermagnetism. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe strain-dependent nature suggests that we may be able to use lattice strain as a tuning knob to induce or control altermagnetism,\u201d Zhang said. \u201cThis could be extremely useful when thinking about next-generation spintronics and RAM architectures.\u201d <\/p>\n

The study also brings more insight into the complexity of understanding and describing quantum materials. Ruthenium dioxide has been the subject of a long and complex scientific debate, as physicists worked to understand what its bulk form magnetic state was before arriving at the consensus of no magnetism. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis work shows just how complex these questions can be,\u201d Yi said. \u201cThe high quality material prep and the careful measurement protocol were critical to our observation of the correct electron spin properties. The results required careful analysis of spin-resolved angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy. Through this, we were able to determine not only the magnetic state symmetries but a potential way to manipulate it in next-generation quantum materials.\u201d<\/p>\n

This work was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DE-SC0026179, DE-SC0020211, DE-SC0024710), the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation\u2019s EPiQS Initiative (GBMF9470) and the Robert A. Welch Foundation (C-2175). <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Recently, the field of magnetics has been proposed a new class of magnetism called altermagnetism, which could allow…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":575832,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[61,60,248,82],"class_list":["post-575831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-physics","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-physics","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=575831"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575831\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/575832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=575831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=575831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=575831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}