Carnegie Mellon University physicists have demonstrated a new form of the Hall effect, a way scientists measure the magnetic and electronic properties of materials.
For more than a century, the familiar effect was understood as needing a magnetic field that points perpendicular to a material. The team showed that an ultrathin device can also respond when the field points within the plane of the device.
The researchers built the device from a few atomic layers of tantalum iridium telluride paired with a magnetic material. In testing, one tiny sensor could detect magnetic fields along multiple axes, where two sensors were previously needed for two directions.
The work was published in Nature Materials. The team is now studying other materials and whether the effect can work at room temperature, an important step before any practical applications.
