We made a 'one-way street' for magnets that lets a single piece of material both process information and store it at the same time.
April 13, 2026
Original Paper
Unidirectional information flow in a nanomagnetic metamaterial
arXiv · 2604.09420
The Takeaway
Usually, magnetic signals go both ways, but this new material forces them to flow in only one direction. This could lead to a new type of computer hardware that processes and stores data in the same place at the same time.
From the abstract
Artificial spin ice (ASI) are metamaterials composed of interacting nanomagnets. Although ASI hold promise for low-power computing, the ability to transmit information through these two-dimensional systems has been limited. Inspired by non-reciprocal transport in nature, we develop a framework for non-reciprocal influence between nanomagnets. Using the framework we discover a family of ASI geometries with inherent directionality. Directional ASI have the property that, when driven by an external