New Research Highlights Novel Electronic Properties of Metal
New Research Highlights Novel Electronic Properties of Metal
  • Korea IT Times
  • 승인 2010.08.17 09:11
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One of our academics recently published a paper in Physical Review B that I thought may be of interest as it has implications for future electronic devices.

Dr. Stephen Jenkins, of the Department of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge, has published a new paper that highlights novel electronic properties of an alloy.

It has been discovered that the half-metallic alloy NiMnSb exhibits properties previously only observed in graphene and topological insulators.

Electrons confined near the surfaces and interfaces of NiMnSb are constrained to move according to a conical energy-momentum relationship (the so-called "Dirac cone") and have no effective mass, meaning these surfaces exhibit the exotic properties associated with effectively mass-less electrons. This includes properties which could allow us to manipulate electrons and "holes", which presents new opportunities in semiconductor electronics.

Further to this, because NiMnSb is a half-metal, it already exhibits useful properties, and this research offers a new opportunity to make the most of these. The close proximity of these two useful properties- the surface properties associated with the Dirac cones and the half-metal properties of the material underneath- could allow the design of a new kind of device that uses both. This has implications for the development of spintronic devices, which use electron spin to carry information. These devices would be much faster than ordinary devices, better suited to interfacing with magnetic storage media, and of a greater capacity and speed than magnetic storage media, meaning they could eventually replace them.

The problems previously encountered in spintronics were related to the tendency of the surfaces and interfaces of half-metals to not act with half-metal properties. Rather, these surfaces conduct like ordinary metals, allowing them to effectively short circuit the half metal that we wish to utilize. While this new discovery does not directly overcome these problems in NiMnSb, it may offer a new way around them, allowing us to use the spintronic potential of NiMnSb without subjecting it to many complicated further treatments.


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