New Material For New Magnetic Theories
The most promising research involving material science may be anything related to electromagnetism at the quantum scale. This is because it has the potential to radically change how we build materials for many high-tech applications that each could change the world:
- Quantum computing.
- Nuclear fusion.
- Room temperature superconductors.
And we are still learning a lot about what magnetic material can be made of. For example, it was only in 2022 that a team of researchers at Rice University discovered that “kagome material,” a type of metallic crystal, had surprising magnetic properties.
On October 18th of 2024, the same researchers announced a new breakthrough in this field, and published their results in Nature Communications under the title “Persistent flat band splitting and strong selective band renormalization in a kagome magnet thin film”.
The work was done in collaboration with researchers at the University of West Bohemia (Czech Republic), Rehovot Institute of Science (Israel), Brookhaven National Lab (USA), and Los Alamos National Laboratory (USA).
Kagome Material
Before discussing the most recent publication, we must explain a little about what kagome materials are.
It takes its name from the kagome weaving pattern used in traditional Japanese craft, or trihexagonal tiling, with overlapping triangles and large hexagonal voids.
Source: Research Gate
In a similar way, kagome materials like for example magnetic iron-germanium crystals are organized in this pattern at the atomic level. Since the initial discoveries, it has been realized that iron-tin thin film (FeSn) exhibits a structure much closer to the ideal kagome lattice.
Source: Rice University
Unique Magnetic Properties
Already in 2022, unique properties of the kagome material had been noticed:
- Magnetic effects require electrons to flow around the kagome triangles, akin to superconductivity.
- Although unlike other forms of “true” superconductivity, it is known for sure that this effect can persist at room temperature & normal pressure conditions.
- The presence of a “charge density wave“, where the electrons “merge” into each other into a collective wave, collectively carrying an electric current.
- Unlike “normal” superconductivity, this comes in spikes, like water dripping from a faucet more than a continuous electron flow.
- Despite displaying charge density wave, Kagome material also displays magnetic properties, usually 2 incompatible properties.
Overall, the very organized nature of kagome materials could make them easier to study phenomena at the very edge of our understanding of electromagnetism like “unconventional superconductivity” or “the continual fluctuations between magnetic states in quantum spin liquids”.
“At some point, you want to be able to say, ‘I want to make a material with particular behaviors and properties.‘
I think kagome is a good platform towards that direction, because there are ways to make direct predictions, based on the crystal structure, about the kind of band structure you will get and therefore about the phenomena that can arise based on that band structure. It has many of the right ingredients.”
Ming Yi – Associate Professor, Physics and Astronomy at Rice University
New Insights Into Kagome Material
So far, the existing theories about magnetism in kagome metals assumed that itinerant electrons drove magnetic behavior. However, the new publication reveals that FeSn’s magnetic properties arise from localized electrons, not the mobile electrons scientists previously thought responsible.
To achieve this insight, the researchers used advanced tools like molecular beam epitaxy and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy to create and analyze high-quality FeSn thin films.
Source: Nature
The discovery also indicates that the magnetism and electron correlations in kagome magnets work together in a complex interplay.
Applications
At first, the implications of this discovery are a little hard to grasp for non-physicists.
The first consequence is that it opens the way to understanding better similar materials, like the still not fully understood potential high-temperature superconductors. This is a field where the practice is ahead of the theory in many respects.
“Strongly correlated materials are more challenging. There’s a lack of connection between theory and measurement.
So, not only is it difficult to find materials that are both strongly correlated and topological, but when you do find them and measure them it is also very difficult to connect what you’re measuring with a theoretical model that explains what’s going on.”
Ming Yi – Associate Professor, Physics and Astronomy at Rice University
Another field that could greatly benefit from this research is quantum computing.
More specifically, it could be used to create “quantum logic gates,” a key component of quantum computers that are currently difficult to create and utilize.
“For weakly correlated materials like the original topological insulators, first principle calculations work really well.
Just based on how the atoms are arranged, you can calculate what kind of band structure to expect. There’s a really good pathway from a materials design perspective. You can even predict the topology of the materials.
Ming Yi – Associate Professor, Physics and Astronomy at Rice University
Investing In Advanced Magnetic Material
Superconductivity and associated physics phenomena are likely to become a big deal in both sciences and the tech industry over the next years. This is because tremendous experimental progress has been made in the last five years, as we described in “Progress In Superconductivity Making Way For A New Technological Revolution”.
This includes not only kagome materials we discussed here, but also pyrolytic graphite, 2D interface superconductor, and room temperature superconductor LK-99.
You can invest in superconductor-related companies through many brokers, and you can find our recommendations for the best brokers in the USA, Canada, Australia, the UK, and many other countries on securities.io.
You can also learn more about companies active in this field in our articles “Top 10 Non-Silicon Computing Companies” and “Top 10 Nanotechnology Stocks”.
Quantum Computing Companies
International Business Machines Corporation (IBM +2.41%)
International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) was the leading force behind the commercialization of the first mainframe computer. However, it has fallen behind in the production volume of other tech giants like Apple (AAPL +1.03%), TSMC , and NVIDIA (NVDA +3%).
It is, however, at the forefront of the development of quantum computers. For example, it developed its 127-qubit “Eagle” quantum computer, which was followed by a 433-qubit system known as “Osprey.”
And this is now followed by “Condor”, a 1,121 superconducting qubit quantum processor based on cross-resonance gate technology, together with “Heron”, a quantum processor at the very edge of the field.
Quantum computers could benefit from improved magnetic control, enhancing qubit stability and reliability, which are essential for processing power.
Similarly, advancements in superconductors, which rely on controlled magnetic fields, could lead to more efficient energy transmission and cooling systems, particularly at higher temperatures.
IBM is involved in most of the other cutting-edge innovations in computing and the semiconductors industry. These include conducting organic materials, neuromorphic computing, photonics, etc.
To some extent, IBM has become a “patent company” with expertise in developing new computing methods and licensing them to the industry.
So far, it seems very determined to hold as many key patents in all the non-silicon computing methods it can get, replicating its past success when contributing massively to developing the semiconductor industry into the giant it is today.
NVIDIA Corporation (NVDA +3%)
NVIDIA has evolved from a niche semiconductor company specializing in graphic cards to a tech giant at the forefront of the AI revolution and the massive amount of hardware it needs.
This was achieved through the development of CUDA, a general-purpose programming interface for NVIDIA’s GPUs, opening the door for other uses than gaming.
“Researchers realized that by buying this gaming card called GeForce, you add it to your computer, you essentially have a personal supercomputer. Molecular dynamics, seismic processing, CT reconstruction, image processing—a whole bunch of different things.”
Jensen Huang, in an interview with Sequoia
This wider adoption of GPUs, and more specifically NVIDIA hardware, created a positive feedback loop based on network effects: the more uses, the more end users and programmers familiar with it, the more sales, the more R&D budget, the more acceleration in computing speed, the more uses, etc.
Source: Nvidia
Today, the installed base includes hundreds of millions of CUDA GPUs.
Another remarkable thing about the evolution of AI computing power is that it follows an exponential law instead of the more linear Moore’s Law for CPU. This is because not only is the GPU hardware getting better, but the required processing power has decreased over radical improvement in how neural networks are trained.
Source: NVIDIA
While a leader in GPU and AI, NVIDIA is also very active in developing quantum computing into a new growth engine.
Similar to how it deployed CUDA for neural network applications, Nvidia has released CUDA-Q for quantum computing, offering a quantum cloud system where you can rent NVIDIA quantum computing capacity through a cloud service.
Source: NVIDIA
This also includes technology like NVIDIA’s cuQuantum for researchers to emulate quantum computers, cuPQC for quantum encryption, and DGX Quantum for integration of both classical and quantum computing.
Overall, NVIDIA is at the forefront of building a quantum computing ecosystem, capitalizing on its position as a leader in AI and AI hardware.
Source: NVidia
Would NVIDIA manage to create a whole new segment in quantum computing beyond its existing GPU and AI business, it could keep growing with the exponential application of quantum computing for many more years.
