Miniaturized electronics have a bright future thanks to new techniques proposed by Khalifa University researchers that speed up the discovery of unique “ferrovalley” materials. 

Valleytronics—from ‘valley’ and ‘electronics’—is an exciting research field in the semiconductor industry that researchers are eyeing as a faster way to store and process data.

Semiconductor technology is currently based on the manipulation of the charge of electrons. When excited, electrons jump the material bandgap and become charged, and this charge is used to store and process information.  In addition, electrons also have additional degrees of freedom, such as spin and valley, that can encode and process information.

Dr. Abhishek Sharan, Postdoctoral Fellow, and Dr. Nirpendra Singh, Assistant Professor, developed new ultra-thin magnetic semiconducting materials, known as ‘ferrovalley’ materials, using a prediction algorithm and revealed these 2D materials that can be used to develop the next generation of miniaturized electronic devices. Their results were published in Their work has been featured on cover page of the journal’s April 2022 edition.

“In the past decade, valleytronics has opened up a wide platform of research for discovering new materials exhibiting valley polarization for storage and information processing,” Dr. Singh said. “2D materials are an exciting category of materials in this class, with 2D ferrovalley materials particularly interesting and highly sought after as they exhibit intrinsic magnetism.”

“In ‘ferrovalley’ materials, in addition to charge and spin, the electrons possess another degree of freedom known as the valley degree of freedom,” Dr. Sharan said. “These materials exhibit two unequal energy levels along two equivalent valleys that the electrons can occupy. The electrons can be manipulated so as to occupy a specific valley in a controllable manner, which can be used to encode and process information in ways that go beyond conventional charge-based electronics.”

In traditional computing, computers represent information in binary code, which is written as sequences of 0s and 1s. Information exists in one of two states: 0 (no charge) and 1 (charged), which translates into “on” or “off.”

With valleytronics, the same applies but with additional enhancement: one valley or the opposite valley in addition to on or off, 1 or 0. Therefore, the electrons now have four degrees of freedom.

“If spin is involved too, as in spintronics, electrons possess eight possible states,” Dr. Sharan added. “With more degrees of freedom, more information can be stored, paving the way to speedy, energy-efficient, and miniaturized devices.”

Manipulating this additional degree of freedom – switching an electron from one valley to the other – requires an energy input and a lot of energy at that. The valley polarization can be achieved using light waves, where the electrons jump between the valleys. But this process is dynamic and has a limited lifetime.

The other way to do it is magnetic proximity. But adding an external magnetic field increases the device’s energy consumption and means the device needs to be larger, negating its use in miniature electronics.

Ferromagnetism is the fundamental mechanism by which certain materials, such as iron, cobalt, and nickel, form permanent magnets or are attracted to magnets. Only a few ultrathin substances display ferromagnetism, and experimental discovery of these materials is a daunting process. However, a computational model would speed discovery significantly.

The two materials they identified are Lanthanum iodide, LaI2, and Praseodymium iodide PrI2. Both LaI2 and PrI2 are similar in structure to Molybdenum disulfide, MoS2, which is a well-known and effective 2D semiconductor material already in use in microelectronics but does not exhibit intrinsic magnetism.

“Both LaI2 and PrI2 are exciting candidates for valleytronics applications,” Dr. Sharan said. “We’re expecting great experimental results from these two newly identified ferrovalley materials.”

Jade Sterling
Science Writer
22 March 2022

The post Discovering New 2D Materials for Microelectronics appeared first on Khalifa University.

Dr. Faisal Khan, Assistant Professor of Mathematics and a Principle Investigator in the Center for Cyber-Physical Systems (C2PS) at Khalifa University, will bring international attention to KU’s expertise in quantum computing at a mini-symposium he is organizing on Wednesday, 12 February 2020 in Seattle, Washington, USA, during the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics’ (SIAM) Conference on Parallel Processing for Scientific Computing.

Quantum computers can in principle be millions of times faster than conventional computers, and the current first generation of these machines can solve certain industrial optimization problems significantly faster than traditional computers. For example, in October 2019, Google’s quantum processor solved a problem in 200 seconds that a state-of the-art supercomputer would have require 10,000 years to solve.

Quantum computers are capable of such powerful, high-speed analysis and computation because unlike conventional computing, quantum computing is not limited to two bit values, 0 or 1. Rather a qubit can be 0 or 1, or have properties of both of these values simultaneously, which is called superposition.

Dr. Khan, who heads the University’s Quantum Computing Research Group, will showcase the fundamental contributions he and other KU faculty are making to the field of quantum computing; a market which is expected to exceed US$495 million by 2023, according to a report by market research analysts Markets and Markets.

His presentation, titled “Nash embedding: A roadmap to realizing quantum hardware” will describe “an approach to engineer hardware for quantum computers that – unlike current ‘synthetic’ or ‘quasi-quantum’ hardware prototypes – is robust against classical noise arising from the environment in a mathematically and physically precise way,” Dr. Khan explained. The approach is based on the work of the Noble Laureate, John Nash, in differential geometry.

The symposium participants include individuals who are at the forefront of research in the field of quantum computing and its applications to industry. They will be answering questions like: What are quantum computers (QCs) today and what will they be like in the next five to 15 years? In what mathematical models should subject-matter experts formulate their problems so applications will benefit from QCs in a sustainable way? How will subject-matter experts develop applications for QCs? What are to be considered best practices in developing and programming quantum computing architectures? And what opportunities for quasi-automatic transformation by new compiler-like tools can exploit the power of well-matched mathematical models?

By organizing a mini-symposium that will facilitate dialogue among some of the world’s leading quantum computing researchers and academics, Dr. Khan is helping to position the UAE as a reference for knowledge and innovation in quantum computing.

Erica Solomon
Senior Editor
27 January 2020

The post KU’s Quantum Computing Research to be Highlighted at International Symposium appeared first on Khalifa University.