The announcement of the invention of a new class of materials is expected to pave the way for a range of new technological advances such as fast and slim laptops to powerful Internet search engines.

Details of the new class of materials invented by a University of Wollongong researcher has been released in the well respected physics journal, Physical Review Letters, published by the American Physical Society.

The researcher behind the invention is Associate Professor Xiaolin Wang who is a Queen Elizabeth II Fellow and the Co-oordinator of Spintronic and Electronic Materials at the Institute for Superconducting and Electronic Materials (ISEM) in UOW’s Faculty of Engineering.

According to Professor Wang, the discovery could open the door to a wealth of new scientific and technological possibilities such as fast and slim laptops, better multi-functional and slim music players such as iPods, MP3 players and improved powerful Internet search engines - all of which require hard discs where information is densely packed.

Professor Wang said that in quantum solid-state band theory, materials in nature were generally classified as insulators, semiconductors and metals. Researchers throughout the world have been searching for years to find a new class of materials which is different from these materials. Modern electronic devices are all based on the charges of electrons in semiconductors or metals.

“An electron has two important properties - one is its negative electric charge and the other is commonly referred to as its spin,” Professor Wang said.

“Conventional electronics and its devices use only the electron’s charge for information processing. When both spin and charge are used simultaneously, astonishing and unusual physical phenomena occur. It may mean these materials are used in devices that can process information much faster and store significantly more data than the devices we currently use,” Professor Wang said.