Engineers at Brown University report a way to make extremely thin electronic materials retain properties they usually lose as they shrink. Their work focuses on bismuth ferrite, whose linked electrical and magnetic behaviour could be useful in low-power memory and computing. The team combines a carefully chosen substrate with a metallic layer to preserve those functions. Brown’s October 28 account describes research published in Nature Materials. The findings may help address the energy demands of computing, including AI, but they do not amount to a finished commercial chip. Moving from a promising material to a manufactured device remains a separate engineering challenge.
Brown University
