Multi-functional “quantum detergent” for spintronic applications

An international team of researchers, led by the National Research Council (CNR), IOM institute in Trieste, Italy, and the Departments of Chemistry at Princeton University, Louisiana State University and Rutgers University in United States, has relied in a joint venture between theorists, experimentalists and sample growers across chemistry and physics to study the magnetic and electronic properties of EuSn₂P₂, a magnetic topological insulator composed of Europium, Tin, and Phosphorus arranged in a layer-by-layer crystalline structure.

The understanding and the interplay of magnetism and high-order topology in a quantum material is one of the most challenging research directions in materials science, holding potentialities for future spintronics applications, where the spin carried by an electron, being an essential quantum entity, could be manipulated and used as information carrier in a device and/or as a single quantum bit of information.