Dr. Suprem Das’ Research Team Featured in Physics Journal

Suprem Das, IMSE assistant professor, is leading a team studying the next generation of information carriers and storage units. Their researchwas recently featured on the cover of the June 2019 issue of Applied Physics Letter . Industrial engineering graduate student, Aroop Behera, a member of Das’ research group, is the first author on the research paper. This work is a collaboration with Sugata Chowdhury, senior researcher and co-author at Rice University, who is presently stationed at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Maryland.

Currently, silicon is the standard element used to manufacture computer chips and transistors, but the need for greater storage capacity and faster transmissions is leading scientists to explore other material options. Their research has been looking at the possibility of using a quantum mechanical degree of freedom of an electron, called spin, instead of the charge used in electronics today. Although spin can store a massive amount of information compared to charge, manipulating and stabilizing it within a material is notoriously difficult and is yet to be achieved.

Das’ team believes the answer to these issues are called ‘skyrmions,’ an arrangement of atomic spins in a unique and topologically protected way. These skyrmions have proven to be physically stable and can be used as information carriers. Click here to read the team’s full article.