As demand for energy-intensive computing grows, researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have developed a new technique that lets scientists see—in unprecedented detail—how interfaces move in promising materials for computing and other applications. The method, now available to users at the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences at ORNL, could help design dramatically more energy-efficient technologies.

The research is published in the journal Small Methods.

Data centers today consume as much energy as small cities, and that usage is skyrocketing. To counter the trend, scientists are studying exotic materials such as ferroelectrics that could store and process information far more efficiently than silicon, which is traditionally used. But realizing the potential depends on understanding the processes occurring at dimensions thousands of times smaller than a human hair —specifically, at the ferroelectric material’s domain walls, which are the boundaries between areas of the material that exhibit different magnetic or electric properties.