Japanese scientists manage to turn a semiconductor magnetic at room temperature

Physicists from the University of Tokyo in Japan managed to turn a semiconductor magnetic using a modest voltage (4V) - at room temperature. Up until now, you had to use very low temperature and a large voltage to achieve that. The idea is to incorporate an electrochemical cell into a field-effect transistor.

The team say that this could lead to more energy efficient MRAM chips - as you won't need to apply current when writing data.