For decades, ferromagnetic materials have driven technologies like magnetic hard drives, magnetic random access memories and oscillators. But antiferromagnetic materials, if only they could be harnessed, hold out even greater promise: ultra-fast information transfer and communications at much higher frequencies – a “holy grail” for physicists.

As a freshman, Dan Ralph was inspired by an engaging physics teacher who Ralph considered a Yoda-like character who was very good at posing problems that helped them understand what they were learning. Dan Ralph as co-director of Kavli Institute at Cornell (KIC) states "We're constantly looking for new puzzles, new problems, and new areas of research that people haven't considered before. Some involve fundamental science questions while others are more about engineering, but they are all areas where research can make a difference."

Cornell researchers discovered a strategy to switch the magnetization in thin layers of a ferromagnet – a technique that could eventually lead to the development of more energy-efficient magnetic memory devices.

Read the recent Grad School "Student Spotlight" on Yongjian Tang, recipient of the Hsien and Daisy Yen Wu Scholarship and graduate researcher in the Ralph Group.