{"slug": "a-breakthrough-in-magnetism-could-make-ai-chips-use-dramatically-less-energy", "title": "A breakthrough in magnetism could make AI chips use dramatically less energy", "summary": "Researchers at Brown University have eliminated the \"dead layer\" effect that strips multiferroic materials of their electrical and magnetic properties at extreme thinness, producing bismuth ferrite films that remain ferroelectric and magnetic down to a few angstroms, the university reported on November 12, 2026. The team, led by Lucas Caretta, an assistant professor of engineering at Brown, deposited the material on a dysprosium scandate foundation and found the process also enhanced its magnetic capabilities; the findings were published in Nature Materials. \"We show that you can make this material basically as thin as you want -- down to a few angstroms -- and it's still ferroelectric, and it's still magnetic,\" Caretta said. The advance could enable computer memory and logic components that switch with very small voltages, cutting the energy demands of computing and AI.", "body_md": "# A breakthrough in magnetism could make AI chips use dramatically less energy\n\n- Date:\n- November 12, 2026\n- Source:\n- Brown University\n- Summary:\n- Researchers at Brown University have overcome a major obstacle to creating ultra-low-power computer chips that could help slash the energy demands of AI. Their breakthrough eliminates a long-standing \"dead layer\" problem that causes promising materials to stop working when made extremely thin. Remarkably, the new technique not only preserves the materials' electrical and magnetic properties at nearly atomic thicknesses but also gives them enhanced magnetic capabilities\n- Share:\n\nA promising new approach to building computer chips could dramatically reduce the energy needed for computing, including the rapidly growing demands of artificial intelligence. At the center of the breakthrough is a special class of materials known as multiferroics, which combine electrical and magnetic properties that can be controlled together using extremely small voltages.\n\nThese materials could make future electronics far more energy efficient than today's technology. However, a major obstacle has prevented their use in conventional computer chips. When multiferroics are made thin enough to fit inside these devices, they typically lose the electrical and magnetic behavior that makes them valuable. Scientists call this problem the \"dead layer\" effect.\n\nResearchers at Brown University have now developed a way to overcome this limitation. Their technique produces extremely thin films of bismuth ferrite, a widely studied multiferroic material, without sacrificing its essential properties. Even more remarkably, the process gives the material new magnetic characteristics that could make it especially useful for future electronics.\n\n\"We've established that we can get rid of the dead layer,\" said Lucas Caretta, an assistant professor of engineering at Brown who led the work. \"We show that you can make this material basically as thin as you want -- down to a few angstroms -- and it's still ferroelectric, and it's still magnetic.\"\n\nThe findings were published in the journal *Nature Materials*.\n\n**Why Multiferroics Could Transform Computer Chips**\n\nWhat makes multiferroics so attractive for computing is the unusual connection between their electrical and magnetic properties. Their atomic structure is made up of repeating units in which positive and negative charges are positioned on opposite sides, creating a property known as electrical polarization.\n\nApplying a small voltage can reverse this polarization, effectively switching the positions of the positive and negative charges. This provides a potential way to store digital information as binary values (ones and zeros) using very little electricity.\n\nBecause the material's magnetic behavior is linked to its electrical polarization, the stored information can also be retrieved magnetically. This combination could enable computer memory and logic components that require significantly less energy than existing technologies.\n\nThe challenge has been making these materials small enough for practical devices. Modern computer chips require exceptionally thin layers, but multiferroics traditionally stop functioning properly when reduced to such dimensions.\n\nTwo separate effects cause this breakdown. First, the material's atomic structure becomes distorted, disrupting the arrangement and chemical environment necessary for its properties to function. Second, internal electric fields interfere with the material's polarization until it can no longer be maintained. Together, these effects destroy both its ferroelectric and magnetic behavior, creating the troublesome dead layer.\n\n**How Brown Engineers Eliminated the Dead Layer**\n\nTo solve the problem, the Brown University team developed a new method for producing thin films of bismuth ferrite.\n\nThe researchers deposited the material onto a foundation made of dysprosium scandate, a compound derived from rare earth elements. This underlying material has a crystal structure with slightly smaller dimensions than bismuth ferrite, creating a mismatch between their atomic arrangements.\n\nThat mismatch places the bismuth ferrite under compression, helping preserve the atomic structure required for its electrical and magnetic properties to remain intact.\n\nThe team also incorporated a second metallic layer designed to counteract unwanted electric fields. By preventing those fields from disrupting the material's electrical polarization, the additional layer addresses the other major cause of the dead layer effect.\n\nTogether, these changes allow the bismuth ferrite film to retain its multiferroic properties even when reduced to just a few angstroms in thickness.\n\nBut the researchers discovered something else. Rather than simply preserving the material's original capabilities, their approach actually improved its magnetic behavior.\n\n**An Unexpected Form of Magnetism**\n\nThe engineered layers caused the bismuth ferrite to exhibit altermagnetism, an unusual form of magnetism that combines useful characteristics of two more familiar magnetic states: ferromagnetism and antiferromagnetism.\n\nThis discovery could be particularly important for developing faster and more compact computer components.\n\n\"Ferromagnets are useful for memory and logic because they produce strong magnetic signals that are easy to read out,\" Caretta said. \"The challenge is that they are relatively slow, and their stray magnetic fields make it difficult to pack devices densely on a chip without interference. Antiferromagnets can operate much faster and avoid those stray fields, but their signals are much harder to detect. Altermagnets are kind of the best of both worlds -- they can be fast, densely integrated and still provide a strong electrical signal for readout.\"\n\nIn other words, altermagnets offer a potentially valuable combination of speed, compactness, and readable signals. These characteristics could help engineers build computer components that operate efficiently without the interference problems associated with conventional magnetic materials.\n\nThe ability to create this magnetic behavior in an exceptionally thin multiferroic film makes the discovery especially promising for future chip designs.\n\n**A New Path Toward Energy-Efficient AI Computing**\n\nAs artificial intelligence continues to drive demand for computing power, developing hardware that consumes less electricity has become an increasingly important goal.\n\nCaretta believes the new findings could help bring multiferroic materials closer to practical use in low-power memory and computing devices. Although the technology still needs further development before it can be incorporated into commercial chips, the research demonstrates that a long-standing materials limitation can be overcome.\n\nIt also shows that carefully engineering a material's atomic environment can do more than preserve its existing properties. Under the right conditions, it can produce useful behavior that was not present in the original material.\n\n\"We know the underlying properties are already there in the bulk materials,\" Caretta said. \"The trick is learning how to engineer them into a form that's useful -- and sometimes even better than what nature gives us.\"\n\nThe research received funding from the U.S. Army Research Office (W911NF-21-2-0162), the National Science Foundation (DMR-2039380, OIA-2327352) and the U.S. Department of Energy (DE-AC02-05CH11231).\n\n**Story Source:**\n\nMaterials provided by **Brown University**. *Note: Content may be edited for style and length.*\n\n**Journal Reference**:\n\n1. Geo Fratian, Maya Ramesh, Xinyan Li, Evangelos Golias, Yousra Nahas, Sebastian Maria Ulrich Schultheis, Julian Skolaut, Marti Checa, Arundhati Ghosal, Evan Krysko, Paul Malinowski, Brendan D. Faeth, Jan Priessnitz, F. C. Fobasso Mbognou, Atsushi Hariki, Kosuke Sakurai, Mizuki Furo, Shashank Kumar Ojha, Morgan Congdon, Shiyu Zhou, Alexander Qualls, Kai Litzius, Christoph Klewe, Peter Meisenheimer, Jan Kuneš, Kyle Shen, Laurent Bellaiche, Libor Šmejkal, Darrell G. Schlom, Yimo Han, Sergei Prokhorenko, Ramamoorthy Ramesh, Paul Stevenson, Angela Wittmann, Lucas Caretta. **Altermagnetic signatures and topological textures in ultrathin multiferroic BiFeO3** .*Nature Materials* , 2026; DOI:[10.1038/s41563-026-02786-1](http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41563-026-02786-1)\n\n**Cite This Page**:\n\n*ScienceDaily*. Retrieved November 12, 2026 from www.sciencedaily.com", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/a-breakthrough-in-magnetism-could-make-ai-chips-use-dramatically-less-energy", "canonical_source": "https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/11/261111005853.htm", "published_at": "2026-11-13 01:40:17+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-11-13 02:54:46.052303+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-chips", "ai-infrastructure", "ai-research"], "entities": ["Brown University", "Lucas Caretta", "Nature Materials", "bismuth ferrite", "dysprosium scandate"], "also_reported_by": [], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/a-breakthrough-in-magnetism-could-make-ai-chips-use-dramatically-less-energy", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/a-breakthrough-in-magnetism-could-make-ai-chips-use-dramatically-less-energy.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/a-breakthrough-in-magnetism-could-make-ai-chips-use-dramatically-less-energy.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/a-breakthrough-in-magnetism-could-make-ai-chips-use-dramatically-less-energy.jsonld"}}