Scientists in the US have created magnonic crystals that replicate graphene-like electron behavior using engineered magnetic spin waves.
Scientists in the US have linked two seemingly unrelated areas of physics after demonstrating that magnetic spin waves can mimic the behavior of electrons in graphene.Researchers at the Grainger College of Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign , unveiled how to develop 2D magnetic systems to follow the same equations as mobile electrons in 2D graphene.
They believe the findings could improve microwave technology used in wireless and cellular networks, and potentially help design novel radiofrequency devices and explore exotic behaviors in 2D systems. “It’s not at all obvious that there is an analogy between 2D electronics and 2D magnetic behaviors, and we’re still amazed at how well this analogy works,” Bobby Kaman, a PhD student at UIUC and lead author of the study, pointed out. Mimicking grapheneGraphene is a single, atom-thick layer of carbon atoms arranged in a hexagonal lattice . It acts as a fundamental building block for graphite. It has become popular for its electronic properties.Kaman, a student in the research group of Axel Hoffmann, PhD, a professor at UIUC, was studying metamaterials when he realized that electrons in graphene and magnetization waves in magnonic materials can both behave like waves.This made him wonder whether magnetic systems could be engineered to mimic how electrons move through graphene. “Graphene is unique because its conduction electrons organize into massless waves, so I was curious if altering the physical geometry of a magnonic material to look like graphene would make it act like graphene,” Kaman said. Magnons, also called spin waves, are collective waves created when microscopic magnetic moments inside a material oscillate together. “I thought it would maybe have a handful of similar properties to graphene, but the analogy was much deeper and richer than I expected,” the PhD student continued.A surprising discovery To test the idea, the team made a magnonic crystal, a magnetic material designed with a repeating pattern that controls how spin waves move. It consisted of a thin magnetic film patterned with holes arranged in a hexagonal lattice. When the team calculated how the spin waves travel through this structure, they discovered their energies and motion followed the same mathematical equations that describe graphene’s electrons. In addition, the calculations revealed nine distinct energy bands for spin waves. Some of these behaved like graphene’s massless electron waves. Others, in turn, corresponded to localized states and even exhibited topological effects. These are phenomena that can give rise to highly robust wave transport. Hoffmann unveiled the work directly connects an engineered spin system with a fundamental physics model. “Magnonic crystals are notorious for producing an overwhelming variety of structure- and geometry-dependent phenomena, most of which are cataloged without really being understood,” he said. “The graphene analogy in this system provides a clear explanation for the observed behaviors.”The scientists believe the findings could have practical applications in microwave technologies used in wireless and cellular networks. According to Hoffman, one such device is a microwave circulator, which allows microwave radio signals to travel in only one direction.“They are usually bulky, but the magnonic system we studied could allow microwave devices to be miniaturized to the micrometer scale,” he concluded in a press release. The study has been published in the journal Physical Review X.
Graphene Magnonic Crystals Magnons Physics Science Spin Waves Sustainability University Of Illinois Urbana-Champaign USA
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