A paper titled ‘High-Temperature Magnetic and Structural Properties of Single-Crystal YCrO3’, written by Zhu Yinghao, a PhD student from the University of Macau (UM) Institute of Applied Physics and Materials Engineering (IAPME), was presented at the 2019 Joint Annual Conference of Physical Societies in Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area and received an Excellent Poster Award. Zhu’s study focuses on the magnetic property, crystallographic structure, and multiferroic mechanism of multiferroic YCrO3 single crystal at high temperatures (300-1200 K). The study has found that YCrO3 can greatly increase the storage space on hard disks under certain conditions. The discovery is expected to help advance next-generation computer storage technologies.

In the design of computer hard disks currently available on the market, information is written by an external magnetic field and the process involves the consumption of a large amount of energy. Zhu’s study has found that by taking advantage of the magnetoelectric coupling characteristics of multi-ferric materials and writing magnetic potential with energy-saving electric fields, the amount of energy consumption in hard disk storage can be greatly reduced. These materials will help to drive the development of big data computation technologies.

The study has also found that multiferroic materials have the following advantages: a) Using the external electric field to achieve magnetic storage can greatly reduce energy consumption and heat release, so it can be widely used in capacitors, high-performance information storage, displacement, pressure and magnetoelectric sensors. b) With the adoption of multiferroic materials, heat dissipation can be reduced in the computer operation process ; c) The combination of electricity and magnetism of multiferroic materials makes it possible to store several states in one unit. This can be adopted to fabricate new-generation multi-state storing spintronic devices and increase the storage capacity. The study was led by Dr Li Haifeng, an assistant professor from the IAPME, and funded by the Macao Science and Technology Development Fund. A patent is pending for the technology.

The 2019 Joint Annual Conference of Physical Societies in Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area was held at Sun Yat-sen University. Jointly organised by the Physical Society of Guangdong, the Physical Society of Hong Kong, and the Physical Society of Macao, this year’s event attracted over 225 experts, scholars, researchers, and industry practitioners in the field from the Greater Bay Area and other parts of China. IAPME Director Tang Zikang, Prof Liu Tzu-Ming from the Faculty of Health Sciences, professors from other universities, and members of the Chinese Academy of Sciences gave keynote speeches at the event.

 

Source: Institute of Applied Physics and Materials Engineering

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