IIT Bhubaneswar team predicts rare "i-wave" altermagnetism in a three-atom-thick monolayer

Researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bhubaneswar, led by Dr. Manish Kumar Mohanta of the Department of Physics, working with collaborators at Virginia Commonwealth University in the US, have theoretically predicted that a monolayer of iron trichloride (FeCl₃), just three atoms thick, can host i-wave altermagnetism, one of the rarer symmetry classes within the recently identified altermagnetic phase.

Altermagnetism has drawn growing interest in condensed matter physics because it combines features of both ferromagnets and antiferromagnets. Like antiferromagnets, altermagnetic materials produce essentially no stray magnetic fields, which means electronic components built from them can be packed closer together without magnetic interference. At the same time, they can generate and control spin-polarized electric currents, the property that makes them relevant to spintronics, where information is encoded in electron spin as well as charge.

Using first-principles calculations, the team found that the FeCl₃ monolayer supports the i-wave symmetry class of altermagnetism, a more complex and less commonly predicted variant than the d-wave altermagnets that have dominated the field so far. According to the researchers, the predicted material also displays significant spin Hall and anomalous Hall effects, both of which are relevant to efficient spin transport and information processing in electronic circuits. It’s worth noting that this is a computational prediction based on density-functional theory, rather than an experimental observation of the effect in a physical sample.

“With the growing demand for high-speed and energy-efficient computing, this discovery offers a new direction for designing future electronic devices with improved speed, efficiency and reliability,” said Dr. Mohanta.

The researchers point to potential applications spanning high-density memory, spin-based transistors, terahertz communication and quantum information technologies, alongside longer-term relevance to AI hardware and wearable electronics. More broadly, the work adds FeCl₃ to the still-small family of confirmed and predicted altermagnetic materials, and offers another candidate platform for researchers working to translate altermagnetism’s combination of antiferromagnet-like compactness and ferromagnet-like spin control into practical spintronic devices.