Computers, smartphones and data centres of the future could become faster and more efficient, while significantly reducing energy consumption. A key step toward this goal comes from a recent discovery in the field of magnetism, to which the University of Milano-Bicocca has made a major contribution. A team from the Department of Materials Science, led by Professor Silvia Picozzi, has identified a new material—nickel iodide (NiI₂)—which belongs to a recently discovered class known as altermagnets. The study, carried out in collaboration with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), has been published in Nature, one of the world’s leading scientific journals.
In this project, the Milano-Bicocca team was responsible for the theoretical development and numerical simulations, while the MIT team carried out the material’s physical characterisation. Nickel iodide now stands as a key model system for studying altermagnets, though it currently requires extremely low temperatures to display its magnetic properties and is not yet usable in real-world devices.
The next step will be to build on the insights gained from NiI₂ to design new altermagnetic materials that are stable at room temperature. The ultimate goal: to enable the creation of ultra-efficient, high-performance electronic devices.