Magnetic wave mapping breakthrough could speed up electronic devices
Posted on Tuesday 29 July 2025
The team have for the first time detected and tracked magnons - magnetic waves that travel through a material without carrying any electrical current that can be used to encode and carry data faster than the electrical signals currently used in personal electronic devices.
The team, including researchers at the University of York, the SuperSTEM laboratory in Daresbury, the University of Durham and the University of Uppsala, now hope to move towards a more comprehensive understanding of magnons in real material systems, to inform practical device applications.
Dr Demie Kepaptsoglou, from the University of York’s School of Physics, Engineering and Technology, who led the study said: “As technology races toward faster, more energy-efficient devices, we are exploring revolutionary ways to transmit data.
“One promising approach involves using tiny magnetic waves, called magnons, to communicate information within smartphones and computers—potentially faster and with less power than current methods.”
The team detected these elusive waves within a crystal of nickel oxide with remarkable precision. Using advanced spectroscopy in a high-resolution electron microscope at the SuperSTEM Laboratory in Daresbury, they observed magnons at lengths so small that they were once thought impossible to detect.
Dr Kepaptsoglou said: “We now have access to a very small but important piece of the puzzle. Understanding how magnons behave at the smallest scales — down to single atoms — is crucial for developing smaller, more efficient devices.
“This pioneering work aligns with a global effort to harness magnetic waves for in-memory computing, artificial intelligence, and quantum systems—solutions that promise to be faster, more sustainable, and more powerful than current technologies.”
Professor Quentin Ramasse, Director of SuperSTEM, the UK National Research Facility for Advanced Microscopy, where the experiment was conducted, called the development a “major leap for electron microscopy, and a world-first.”
The study, supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and the Royal Society, is published in Nature.