Multiferroics are a promising class of materials for making computer chips and other electronic components that can operate at much lower power than today’s devices. The materials have coupled electrical and magnetic properties that can be manipulated simultaneously with a relatively tiny electrical voltage.

Engineers are hopeful that multiferroics could help reduce the energy burden associated with the rise of AI, but there’s a problem known as the “dead layer” effect: When these materials are made thin enough to use in a computer chip, they lose the electrical and magnetic properties that make them so interesting.

Now, a team of Brown University researchers has developed a technique for making thin films of the multiferroic bismuth ferrite that retain their key properties and have some emergent properties that make them even more useful.