Magnons last 100 times longer in the laboratory and pave the way for tiny, faster, cooler, and magnetism-powered chips.

Written by Viviane Alves

Published on 01/06/2026 at 19:36

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Magnetic quasiparticles reach 18 microseconds in University of Vienna study and reinforce the potential of magnonics

An important breakthrough in magnonics has reignited the debate about the future of miniaturized computers.

Researchers from the University of Vienna, in Austria, managed to extend the lifespan of magnons, quasiparticles linked to magnetization waves in solid materials, by 100 times.

According to the study published in the journal Science Advances, the team led by Rostyslav Serha achieved up to 18 microseconds in duration.

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Magnonics emerges as an alternative to traditional electronics

Magnonics appears as one of the bets to overcome the limits of current electronics.

Traditional electronics manipulate electrons to process information in chips and computational systems.

Magnonics, on the other hand, works with spins, which are magnetic states of these electrons.

These spins can generate waves organized harmoniously, known as magnons.

The technology creates a bridge between electricity and magnetism, similar to the path opened by spintronics.

According to the base text, magnonic processors could be up to 1,000 times faster and operate without intense heating.

What are magnons and why they attract attention

Magnons are magnetization waves that travel through solid magnetic materials.

The simplest comparison is with the ripples formed in a lake when a stone hits the water.

Photons propagate in a vacuum or in optical fibers.

Magnons, on the other hand, move within a magnetic solid.

This characteristic makes these quasiparticles especially interesting for circuits on a very small scale.

Their wavelength can be reduced to the nanometric scale, allowing magnonic circuits to fit inside chips.

3D scientific illustration showing a magnonic chip with YIG layer on GGG substrate, colored spin waves, magnetic vectors, and input-output channels representing the propagation of magnons in an experimental device. — Graphical representation of spin waves and magnons propagating signals in a magnonic device based on yttrium iron garnet (YIG).

Technical advancement depended on extreme cold and ultrapure material

The advancement achieved by the University of Vienna team combined two main strategies.

First, the researchers used short-wavelength magnons, instead of conventional uniform magnons.

This choice made the quasiparticles less sensitive to the crystal’s surface defects.

These defects had limited the magnons’ lifespan in previous experiments.

Next, the scientists cooled ultrapure spheres of yttrium iron garnet, known as YIG, to just 30 millikelvin.

This temperature is very close to absolute zero.

Thermal processes capable of destroying the magnons were practically frozen in this extreme environment.

Cryogenics still limits common applications, but favors advanced systems

The need for extremely low temperatures still represents an obstacle for practical everyday applications.

Advanced computing and high-precision metrology, however, already frequently operate in cryogenic environments.

For this reason, the low temperature does not eliminate the potential of the discovery in these specific fields.

The experiment also demonstrated that the magnons’ lifespan can advance with purer materials.

Even the least pure sample used by the researchers surpassed all previous records.

Material purity may define the future of magnonic computing

The most important conclusion of the study lies in the relationship between material and stability.

The team showed that the duration of magnons is not controlled by an insurmountable physical law.

In practice, longevity depends on the traces of impurities present in the material used.

The purer the material, the longer the lifespan of these quasiparticles can be.

This point places materials science at the center of the advancement of magnonics.

The path to increasingly smaller and more efficient chips depends less on new physics.

The next step depends on the ability to produce even purer, more stable, and suitable materials for magnetism-based systems.

If magnons have already reached 18 microseconds under controlled conditions, how far can this technology transform the next generation of computing?

Magnons last 100 times longer in the laboratory and pave the way for tiny, faster, cooler, and magnetism-powered chips.

Magnetic quasiparticles reach 18 microseconds in University of Vienna study and reinforce the potential of magnonics

Magnonics emerges as an alternative to traditional electronics

What are magnons and why they attract attention

Technical advancement depended on extreme cold and ultrapure material

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Material purity may define the future of magnonic computing

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Magnons last 100 times longer in the laboratory and pave the way for tiny, faster, cooler, and magnetism-powered chips.

Magnetic quasiparticles reach 18 microseconds in University of Vienna study and reinforce the potential of magnonics

Magnonics emerges as an alternative to traditional electronics

What are magnons and why they attract attention

Technical advancement depended on extreme cold and ultrapure material

Two earthworms never before described by science are found in São Carlos and show that integrated systems can protect biodiversity where food is also produced.

Cryogenics still limits common applications, but favors advanced systems

Material purity may define the future of magnonic computing

A giant printer called the “Ferrari” of concrete has landed in Latin America and can already build a 120-square-meter house in just 48 hours, making the traditional construction site look like something from the last century.

Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt has ceased to be a climatic phenomenon and has become a biological system that feeds on itself, with 8,000 kilometers in length, 37 million tons of algae, and scientists confirm that it is now permanent.

Brazil will harvest a record crop of up to 357 million tons of grains, but it does not have the capacity to store a large part of it. The storage deficit has reached the highest level in history and is equivalent to almost the entire production of Argentina.

Under nearly 2 kilometers of ice in Antarctica, scientists have discovered an ancient landscape sculpted by rivers up to 60 million years ago, the size of Wales, preserved as a time capsule that could help predict the advance of ice towards the ocean.

Scientists have discovered that the Earth recycles its own continents in the depths, dragging pieces of crust down during plate collisions and returning them later as magma, in a mechanism called relamination that has helped build the continents for billions of years.

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