Beyond transistor limits: Hybrid magnetic-sound waves could boost computing speed and efficiency - Michigan Engineering News

PhotosKey takeaways:Conventional transistors are expected to reach their maximum energy efficiency by 2037, yet demand for computing power continues to grow. New devices made of combined ferroelectric and ferromagnetic materials (magnetoelectric multiferroics) could radically improve the speed and energy efficiency of computer processors and also add memory capability. The DARPA-funded research is led by University of Michigan Engineering and includes partners from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Newswise — An alternative to the transistor could make computers 100 to 1,000 times faster and more energy efficient, according to a team of researchers from University of Michigan Engineering and the University of Wisconsin, funded with up to $6M from the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency Fast and Curious program. The new device—which the researchers call an M3BOLT—could go beyond the theoretical energy-efficiency limits of today's computers. Modern transistors are expected to reach that limit by 2037, yet the boom in AI and edge computing will continue to raise the demand for computing power.

The recent advancement of miniaturized and portable electronics, particularly wearable and flexible devices, has increased the demand for self-powered sensing technologies. Among these, triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) have received increased attention for developing highly sensitive tactile sensors. TENGs convert external mechanical stimuli into electrical signals through redistribution of electric charges. They are particularly attractive for the development of advanced electronic skin and intelligent robotics. However, conventional tribotronic devices suffer from non-tuneable sensitivity and pose challenges in integration into large-area architectures, limiting practical applications. To address these limitations, a research team led by Associate Professor Jaekyun Kim from the Department of Photonics and Nanoelectronics at Hanyang University in South Korea has developed a novel vertically integrated dual-gated tribotronic transistor. "Our vertical dual-gate architecture not only offers gate-tunable amplification of the triboelectronic responses, but also minimizes pixel footprint, enabling high-density, large-area integration," explains Dr. Kim.

Matias Ginzburg of Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati, Simone Rademacher of LMU Munich and Giacomo De Palma of University of Bologna have demonstrated a fundamental limitation in a widely used simplification of quantum dynamics. The researchers analytically solved a model of N bosonic qubits governed by a purely anti-Hermitian Hamiltonian, revealing that the standard mean-field Hartree approximation fails to accurately predict the system’s behavior as the number of qubits increases. This failure occurs even in the thermodynamic limit, challenging the validity of the Hartree approximation for non-Hermitian Hamiltonians and potentially impacting a quantum algorithm designed to solve nonlinear differential equations. Their findings call for additional conditions to ensure the accuracy of mean-field models in bosonic many-body systems.

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