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Scientists have figured out a new approach to make integrated circuits more efficient by using a different class of magnetic materials called "multiferroics." The material would reduce the energy consumed by logic devices and increase the power efficiency for processing by nearly 1,000 times. 

Experts believe the research would enable computers and other electronic devices as well to process faster and be more efficient in terms of energy.

In their research, they pointed that modern laptops and smartphone get heated after prolonged use and that heat energy is being waster by the microprocessor. Another drawback they pointed that these sometimes "leak" electrons which means they can never be shut down. 

The newly discovered class of materials are charged (ferroelectric) and magnetic (ferromagnetic) and their magnetization is controlled by electricity.

"Spin waves open an opportunity to realize fundamentally new ways of computing while solving some of the key challenges faced by scaling of conventional semiconductor technology, potentially creating a new paradigm of spin-based electronics," said principal investigator Kang L. Wang, UCLA's Raytheon Professor of Electrical Engineering and director of the Western Institute of Nanoelectronics (WIN) in the press release.

"Electrical control of magnetism without involving charge currents is a fast-growing area of interest in magnetics research," said co-author Pedram Khalili, a UCLA assistant adjunct professor of electrical engineering said in the press release. "It can have major implications for future information processing and data-storage devices, and our recent results are exciting in that context."

Their research is published in the journal Applied Physics Letters.