Gold structures improve spin wave transmission and solve the problem of overheating in electronics

The research team has made a breakthrough in significantly increasing the commercial viability of spin wave technology. This innovation is positioned as a next-generation technology solution to solve the persistent problem of heat generation in electronic devices. The results of the study were published on September 26 in the online publication Make a difference.

If you’ve been using your smartphone or computer for a while, you may have been surprised to suddenly find that your device is getting warm. This occurs due to the movement of electrons within the device during data processing and storage, causing some of the energy to be converted into heat. With the rapid development of artificial intelligence and cloud computing, electronics are becoming smaller and more complex, exacerbating the problem of overheating.

As a way to solve the problem of heat generation in electronic devices, information transmission technology using “spin waves” is attracting increasing attention. Spin waves are waves that can transmit information without electron flow, using the spin characteristics of electrons in magnetic insulators.

Recent research has shown that increasing the temperature imbalance of spin waves in a material—that is, the tendency of spin waves on one side of the material to become hotter and the other side to become cooler—increases the efficiency of spin waves in transmitting information. However, there is no technology that can independently control the temperature of spin waves.

A joint research team from POSTECH, Chungnam National University and KAIST has developed a new approach inspired by radiator fins used to cool car engines. The team incorporated nanometer-sized gold structures onto one end of a thin film of magnetic insulator, designing it to effectively regulate temperature based on gold concentration.

These gold structures effectively lowered the temperature of the spin waves at a targeted location, creating a temperature imbalance within the material. Their experiments showed that this thin film improved the efficiency of spin wave transmission by more than 250% compared to traditional methods. This study is the first to report successful independent control of spin wave temperature and demonstrate a method for increasing spin wave transmission efficiency by using this control.

Professor Hyungyu Jin from POSTECH, who led the study, expressed the importance of the research, saying, “This research represents an important milestone in the development of next-generation information transmission technologies to solve the problem of heat generation in electronics.”

Dr. Sang Joon Park, lead author of the study, said: “Overcoming previous limitations, this technology has promising potential for a wide range of future spin wave applications.”

The team was led by Prof. Hyungyu Jin and Dr. Sang Joon Park (currently a researcher at the National Institute of Materials Science, Japan) from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at POSTECH in collaboration with the research group of Prof. Jung-Ryul. Jeong from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering of Chungnam National University and the research group of Professor Se Kwon Kim from the Department of Physics of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST).