Berkeley Lab researchers have successfully demonstrated that electric fields can be used as ON/OFF switches in doped multiferroic films, a development that holds promise for future magnetic data storage and spintronic devices.

Berkeley Lab researchers have taken a major step forward in the technology of spintronics by creating the “persistent spin helix,” which allows them to control the spin states of highly mobile electrons at different locations in a semiconductor and turn the collective state on and off at will. The discovery represents a new conservation law, an important advance in fundamental physics.