UCI Professor Ilya Krivorotov in Frontiers in Energy Research Newsletter

Tiny interfaces transform electronic waste heat into microwave signals

 

Whenever you use electricity, you lose some power as heat. This may be obvious when you’re standing under a heat lamp, but it holds for very efficient electronics, such as LEDs or computer chips. This heat generation has been a major obstacle in improving computer chips, which generate more heat as they work faster. Researchers at Spins and Heat in Nanoscale Electronic Systems (SHINES), an Energy Frontier Research Center, have now demonstrated a way to use this waste heat to transmit information and power using a device made of a non-magnetic conductor and a magnetic insulator. Interactions at the interface between these two dissimilar materials act to selectively allow certain information to be passed from one material to the next.