A team of researchers from the Cluster of Excellence ct.qmat based at the universities JMU Würzburg and TU Dresden has engineered the topological insulator manganese bismuth telluride (MnBi6Te10) to make it ferromagnetic. The amazing thing about this quantum material is that its ferromagnetic properties only occur when antisite disorder is introduced into its atomic structure. To achieve this, some manganese atoms (green) need to be relocated from their original position (second green atomic layer from the top). Only when manganese atoms are present in all the layers containing bismuth atoms (gray) does the magnetic interaction between them become sufficiently contagious to point them in the same direction and create ferromagnetism.Researchers from the Cluster of Excellence ct.qmat have achieved a significant milestone in the pursuit of energy-efficient quantum technologies by designing a ferromagnetic topological insulator.
In 2019, an international research team headed by materials chemist Anna Isaeva, at that time a junior professor at ct.qmat (Complexity and Topology in Quantum Matter), caused a stir by fabricating the world’s first antiferromagnetic topological insulator - manganese bismuth telluride (MnBi2Te4).
This remarkable material has its own internal magnetic field, paving the way for new kinds of electronic components that can store information magnetically and transport it on the surface without any resistance. ...
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