A completely new type of technology: “orbitronics” can replace electronics in gadgets

Thanks to a new discovery, the devices of the future will be able to become not only more powerful, but also safer for the environment.

Team scientists from Germany and Switzerland have completed research that paves the way for a new type of technology — “orbitronics”. They described the details in an article published in the journal Nature Physics.

Researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) in Switzerland and the Max Planck Institute in Germany have found a way to exploit a property of electrons known as “orbital angular momentum”. It provides significant practical advantages for “orbitronics”, which are considered an energy-efficient alternative to traditional electronics.

Electronics use the electron's charge to transmit information, future technologies may use another property of electrons to process information with less impact on the environment. Until recently, the main candidate for another type of “tronics” was “spintronics”, where information was transmitted due to the rotation (spin) of an electron.

Orbitronics is based on the orbital angular momentum of electrons (OCM) rotating around the atomic nucleus. This field holds great promise for memory devices, especially because a large magnetization can potentially be created with a relatively small electrical current, so less energy has to be expended. The main task of scientists now — find good materials for generating OKM streams.

In a new study, the team proved that chiral topological semimetals have the desired properties — is a new class of materials discovered at the Paul Scherrer Institute in 2019. They have a helical atomic structure that resembles a DNA chain.

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“This provides a significant advantage over other materials because you don't need to apply external stimuli to obtain OKM textures – they are an intrinsic property of the material. This can facilitate the creation of stable and efficient OKM flows without the need for special conditions,” — explained Michael Schuler, associate professor of physics at the University of Friborg.

At the same time, in chiral topological metals there is one structure called a “monopole”. In such “monopoles”, the OKM radiates outwards from the central point equally in all directions. However, until now the existence of monopolies was only a scientific theory.

In their study, Schuler and colleagues studied two types of chiral topological semimetals at the Swiss Light Source SLS: palladium-gallium-based and platinum-gallium-based. Then they changed the energy of the photons, measured the signals and, for the first time in history, proved the existence of OKM monopoles experimentally.

As writes the website The DeBrief, with this research, scientists are bringing the future closer, when gadgets will be not only more powerful, but also safer. for the planet Electronic waste has become an acute problem of the Earth due to the huge amount of discarded equipment.

According to the World Health Organization, millions of tons of electronic waste appear every year. About 53.6 million tons were produced worldwide in 2019, and experts predict that number will only grow as technology continues to advance and consumer demand for new devices remains high.

Much of this waste is contains hazardous materials such as lead, mercury and flame retardants. These substances pose a serious health and environmental hazard if mishandled, often leaching into soil and water sources or releasing toxic fumes when burned.