**This piece is part of a six-part series profiling each University scientist named to the 2024 Clarivate Analytics Highly Cited Researchers list. Installments of the series will be posted weekly.**
Axel Hoffmann, professor in Engineering, has been a leader in the field of magnetic materials research for nearly three decades. In November, he was featured on the Clarivate Analytics Highly Cited Researchers list for the fifth consecutive year.
Hoffmann is a founder professor of materials science and engineering and principal investigator at the Hoffmann Research Group in the University’s Materials Research Laboratory.
Hoffmann studies magnetic materials and how magnetic states can be manipulated by humans. Though the world of magnetism remains mysterious to most, Hoffmann explained that it underlies countless everyday uses of digital data.
Get The Daily Illini in your inbox!
“Understanding how we can manipulate these magnetic states (to be) more energy efficient or faster is really very important for maintaining the availability of digital data,” Hoffmann said.
Access to digital data, whether by using a search engine or talking to Siri, is only possible because the information is encoded in the magnetic materials within a device.
Hoffmann’s research group was one of the first to examine spin-orbit interactions, or how electrons in a magnetic field spin in place while orbiting around an atom’s nucleus. By generating a current that interacts with the arrangement of atoms in a material, Hoffmann said his team can manipulate magnetism within a certain area.
This area of study, now known as spin-orbitronics, uses the concept of spin to make data processing more energy efficient.
Hoffmann’s contributions to magnetic materials research follow a long history of human interest in magnetism.
“It’s possibly one of the oldest topics of human scientific investigation because magnetism has been known for thousands of years,” Hoffmann said.
He cited ancient Chinese compasses as an example of early magnetic knowledge, which was used as early as 2,000 years ago.
“I think there’s good reason to believe that magnetic materials will continue to be central to information technologies,” Hoffmann said. “They just provide such an efficient way that allows us to store and manipulate data.”
Hoffmann said the curiosity of those he works with inspires him to continue his research.
“That’s just the fun part,” Hoffmann said. “Every day you walk in your office or in your lab, you don’t necessarily know what new thing you might encounter.”
