A metastable material for future data storage systems has been discovered – it changes its magnetic properties when exposed to light

Scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have discovered a material that, when exposed to light, temporarily transforms into a new metastable state. This property opens the way to a new type of data recording and storage, which is in demand when searching for more capacious and dense media for the future. Such carriers are always needed, and this need will accompany a person forever.

Image source: Mit

The researchers emphasize that they did not become the discoverers of photoinduced phases in certain materials. Such discoveries have long been made for ferroelectrics, magnetic materials, and even superconducting ones. However, in all previous works, the newly acquired miraculous properties disappeared as soon as the light source was turned off. The new work, which examines the properties of the iron, phosphorus and sulfur compound FePS3, shows that the magnetic properties can be changed on command, and in the new state the material will remain stable without external influence for 2.5 milliseconds.

This may seem like a very short period of time. But for the quantum world, the researchers note, this is an abyss of time, which can lead to new technologies both in the field of quantum computing and classical computing. For example, today it is becoming increasingly difficult to reduce the size of the magnetization region on a hard drive platter, which is already done using laser heating or microwave radiation. Conventional magnetic materials are no longer suitable for this. Antiferromagnets are needed that are not afraid of random magnetic interference and magnetization of neighboring areas. FePS3 material is one of these. And under certain conditions, it turns into a paramagnetic and temporarily acquires completely different magnetic properties.

MIT scientists discovered that when FePS3 is cooled to the Néel temperature (-279 ℃ for this compound), irradiating it with a terahertz laser pulse causes the atoms in the material to become excited and transform it into a paramagnetic state. This state remains metastable and lasts 2.5 ms after the termination of the light pulse. Obviously, it would be reasonable to use this property to find a place for it in future data storage systems, which the team of physicists will do in the next stages of work. It is not a fact that this will be the best path to the memory of the future, but the more such paths, the more accurate the result.