One Step Closer to Smarter Electronic Devices, Using Voltage-Driven Ionic Control
Monday, June 23, 2025
Researchers at the University of Waterloo demonstrate an innovative way to manipulate spin properties.
Smartphones that anticipate needs. Wearable technology that responds instantly to one’s body. Smart home devices that understand context more intelligently. All at a greener energy footprint and a higher efficiency rate. Yes, researchers are one step closer to making these applications a reality.
Dr. Guo-Xing Miao (Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering) and his team have demonstrated an integration-friendly way to manipulate spin properties in electronics. Spintronics, or spin electronics, is the study and manipulation of spin in electrons, controlling the spin states for quantum and classical information processing. Traditionally, spintronics rely on large electric currents to create magnetic fields or spin torques to manipulate spin properties. This causes undesirable system overhead and energy dissipation, especially when applied to strongly correlated systems, 2D materials, or complex heterostructures.
Borrowing from the extensive knowledge of rechargeable ionic battery systems that have already revolutionized our daily lives, Miao and his team used a “battery-like” device geometry to carry out their study. They demonstrated an efficient, voltage-driven, highly reversible ionic control of spin channels, using all-solid-state ionic gating, which allows for manipulation of spin states and their direct integration into CMOS circuits.
Figure 1. (a) Schematic of the device concept for quantum and neuromorphic applications. An active spintronic channel is ionically controlled with a battery-like geometry, with solid-state stacks of “cathode”, “anode”, and “electrolyte”.
“Solid-state ionic control, which works at low voltages (just 1–3 volts), offers a more energy-efficient way to tune materials and unlock new behaviours, at the same time ensuring the compatibility with modern integrated circuits” explained Miao. “It also makes it possible to create tunable superconducting systems, something conventional methods struggle with because they can’t mobilize enough charge to trigger transitions in the material.”
This offers additional dimensions of control and mass integration capability for future spintronic applications. There have been major hurdles until now in creating low-power spintronic devices because traditional electronics can’t provide enough control. This emerging method of ionic control further allows the spintronic devices to “learn” over time, similar to how brain cells function by regulating ion flow for synaptic transmission. The adaptability resembling brain cells, could lead to smarter, more efficient technology that processes information akin to how humans think.
The team aims to push the boundaries of spintronics by leveraging these control mechanisms, which offer new pathways for enhancing performance and functionality of future electronic memory and logic devices that is fully compatible with CMOS technologies. Devices with ion controls will be more energy efficient and less demanding on architectural overhead.
“The applicability of this method is vast and can be applied to fundamental research, as well as technological applications” explained Miao. “At the fundamental level, this can easily be used to tune the properties of novel materials to meet the needs on demand. As for the application side, our ‘battery-like’ platform is a great candidate for neuromorphic and quantum hardware applications, advanced logic and memory units, etc. – all these while allowing easy integration and scalability.”
“Voltage-Driven All-Solid-State Ionic Control on Co/CoO Antiferromagnet/Ferromagnet Exchange Bias” was published in ACS Nano by Gabriel Vinicius de Oliveira Silva, Labanya Ghosh, Rabiul Islam, Clodoaldo Irineu Levsartoski de Araujo, and Guo-Xing Miao.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1021/acsnano.5c03052
This project is supported in part by the Canada First Research Excellence Fund (CFREF) through Transformative Quantum Technologies (TQT).