Have you ever noticed your smartphone or computer getting hot after using it for a while?
This happens because as electronic devices process and store data, the movement of electrons inside them generates heat.
With the rise of advanced technologies like artificial intelligence and cloud computing, electronic devices are getting smaller and more powerful, which has made the overheating problem worse.
To tackle this issue, researchers have been exploring a new method that uses “spin waves” to transfer information instead of relying on electron flow.
Spin waves make use of the spin properties of electrons in magnetic materials to transmit data, which could help avoid overheating since they don’t produce as much heat.
One challenge with spin waves is that increasing the temperature difference between different parts of a material makes it easier for the spin waves to transfer information. However, until now, there was no way to independently control the temperature of spin waves within a material.
Researchers from POSTECH, Chungnam National University, and KAIST have developed a clever solution to this problem.
They took inspiration from the radiator fins used in car engines to keep them cool. The research team added tiny, gold structures—just a few nanometers wide—on one end of a thin film made of a magnetic insulator.
By adjusting the concentration of the gold structures, they managed to control the temperature at specific spots within the material.
These gold structures worked like tiny radiators. They effectively reduced the temperature of the spin waves in a targeted area, creating a temperature imbalance within the thin film.
This controlled imbalance allowed the spin waves to transfer information much more efficiently—by over 250% compared to traditional methods.
This research is the first to successfully achieve independent temperature control of spin waves and to show how this control can be used to improve spin wave transfer efficiency.
Professor Hyungyu Jin of POSTECH, who led the study, described it as a “significant milestone” in developing new technologies for information transfer that address the issue of overheating in electronics.
Dr. Sang Jun Park, the lead author, expressed his excitement about the breakthrough, saying, “By overcoming previous limitations, this technology has promising potential for a wide range of future applications using spin waves.”
The research was a collaborative effort led by Professor Hyungyu Jin and Dr. Sang Jun Park from POSTECH’s Department of Mechanical Engineering. The team included Professor Jong-Ryul Jeong from Chungnam National University and Professor Se Kwon Kim’s team from KAIST. Their findings were published in the scientific journal Matter on September 26.
This discovery could lead to a new generation of electronic devices that run cooler and last longer, offering a promising solution to the persistent problem of overheating in modern electronics.
