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Multiferroics are a promising class of materials for making computer chips and other electronic components that can operate at much lower power than today's devices. The materials have coupled electrical and magnetic properties that can be manipulated simultaneously with a relatively tiny electrical voltage.

Engineers are hopeful that multiferroics could help reduce the energy burden associated with the rise of AI, but there's a problem known as the "dead layer" effect: When these materials are made thin enough to use in a computer chip, they lose the electrical and magnetic properties that make them so interesting.

Now, a team of Brown University researchers has developed a technique for making thin films of the multiferroic bismuth ferrite that retain their key properties and have some emergent properties that make them even more useful.

"We've established that we can get rid of the dead layer," said Lucas Caretta, an assistant professor of engineering at Brown who led the work. "We show that you can make this material basically as thin as you want—down to a few angstroms—and it's still ferroelectric, and it's still magnetic."

The interest in multiferroic materials stems from their linked electrical and magnetic properties. Each unit cell of the material's atomic lattice is electrically polarized, meaning positive and negative charges align on opposite sides of the cell. That electrical polarization can be flipped—meaning the positive and negative charges switch sides—by applying a small voltage to the cell.

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