Transistors, the building blocks of modern electronics, are typically made of silicon. Because it’s a semiconductor, this material can control the flow of electricity in a circuit. But silicon has fundamental physical limits that restrict how compact and energy-efficient a transistor can be.

MIT researchers have now replaced silicon with a magnetic semiconductor, creating a magnetic transistor that could enable smaller, faster, and more energy-efficient circuits. The material’s magnetism strongly influences its electronic behavior, leading to more efficient control of the flow of electricity. 

The team used a novel magnetic material and an optimization process that reduces the material’s defects, which boosts the transistor’s performance.

The material’s unique magnetic properties also allow for transistors with built-in memory, which would simplify circuit design and unlock new applications for high-performance electronics.

“People have known about magnets for thousands of years, but there are very limited ways to incorporate magnetism into electronics. We have shown a new way to efficiently utilize magnetism that opens up a lot of possibilities for future applications and research,” says Chung-Tao Chou, an MIT graduate student in the departments of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) and Physics, and co-lead author of a paper on this advance.

Chou is joined on the paper by co-lead author Eugene Park, a graduate student in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE); Julian Klein, a DMSE research scientist; Josep Ingla-Aynes, a postdoc in the MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center; Jagadeesh S. Moodera, a senior research scientist in the Department of Physics; and senior authors Frances Ross, TDK Professor in DMSE; and Luqiao Liu, an associate professor in EECS, and a member of the Research Laboratory of Electronics; as well as others at the University of Chemistry and Technology in Prague. The paper appears today in Physical Review Letters.

Overcoming the limits

In an electronic device, silicon semiconductor transistors act like tiny light switches that turn a circuit on and off, or amplify weak signals in a communication system. They do this using a small input voltage.

But a fundamental physical limit of silicon semiconductors prevents a transistor from operating below a certain voltage, which hinders its energy efficiency.

To make more efficient electronics, researchers have spent decades working toward magnetic transistors that utilize electron spin to control the flow of electricity. Electron spin is a fundamental property that enables electrons to behave like tiny magnets.

So far, scientists have mostly been limited to using certain magnetic materials. These lack the favorable electronic properties of semiconductors, constraining device performance.

“In this work, we combine magnetism and semiconductor physics to realize useful spintronic devices,” Liu says.

The researchers replace the silicon in the surface layer of a transistor with chromium sulfur bromide, a two-dimensional material that acts as a magnetic semiconductor.

Due to the material’s structure, researchers can switch between two magnetic states very cleanly. This makes it ideal for use in a transistor that smoothly switches between “on” and “off.”

“One of the biggest challenges we faced was finding the right material. We tried many other materials that didn’t work,” Chou says.

They discovered that changing these magnetic states modifies the material’s electronic properties, enabling low-energy operation. And unlike many other 2D materials, chromium sulfur bromide remains stable in air.

To make a transistor, the researchers pattern electrodes onto a silicon substrate, then carefully align and transfer the 2D material on top. They use tape to pick up a tiny piece of material, only a few tens of nanometers thick, and place it onto the substrate.

“A lot of researchers will use solvents or glue to do the transfer, but transistors require a very clean surface. We eliminate all those risks by simplifying this step,” Chou says.

Leveraging magnetism

This lack of contamination enables their device to outperform existing magnetic transistors. Most others can only create a weak magnetic effect, changing the flow of current by a few percent or less. Their new transistor can switch or amplify the electric current by a factor of 10.

They use an external magnetic field to change the magnetic state of the material, switching the transistor using significantly less energy than would usually be required.

The material also allows them to control the magnetic states with electric current. This is important because engineers cannot apply magnetic fields to individual transistors in an electronic device. They need to control each one electrically.

The material’s magnetic properties could also enable transistors with built-in memory, simplifying the design of logic or memory circuits.

A typical memory device has a magnetic cell to store information and a transistor to read it out. Their method can combine both into one magnetic transistor.

“Now, not only are transistors turning on and off, they are also remembering information. And because we can switch the transistor with greater magnitude, the signal is much stronger so we can read out the information faster, and in a much more reliable way,” Liu says.

Building on this demonstration, the researchers plan to further study the use of electrical current to control the device. They are also working to make their method scalable so they can fabricate arrays of transistors.

This research was supported, in part, by the Semiconductor Research Corporation, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. Army Research Office, and the Czech Ministry of Education, Youth, and Sports. The work was partially carried out at the MIT.nano facilities.

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Nature Climate Change, Published online: 20 March 2026; doi:10.1038/s41558-026-02587-z

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Growing up in the village of Kewa — located between Santa Fe and Albuquerque in New Mexico — William Pacheco, a member of the Santo Domingo Pueblo, learned the value of his language, its history, and the traditions it carries.

“We speak Keres, a language isolate found in seven villages and communities in central New Mexico,” he says. “It’s an endangered language with fewer than 10,000 speakers.” The Pueblos’ conception of ‘language,’ according to Pacheco, evokes the idea that speaking “comes from deep within.”

Pacheco is a graduate student in the MIT Indigenous Languages Initiative, a special master’s program in linguistics for members of communities whose languages are threatened. The two-year program provides its graduates with the linguistic knowledge to help them keep their communities’ languages alive. The initiative also offers expanded opportunities for students and faculty to become involved in Indigenous and endangered languages, working with both native speaker linguists in the master’s program and outside groups, ideas that appealed to him.

“There’s some complexity to our language that defies traditional instruction,” says Pacheco, who will complete his studies this spring. “I want to develop the linguistic tools I need to improve my understanding of its construction and how best to teach and preserve it.” Pacheco is keenly aware of cultural differences in how language transmission occurs. Language, he believes, evolves over time and is best learned experientially; the Western model of language learning prioritizes immediacy and test-taking.

A variety of factors complicate efforts to preserve and potentially teach Keres. Each of the villages where it’s spoken has its own distinct dialect. These dialects are mutually intelligible to various degrees based on where they’re being spoken. Additionally, the last three decades have seen a significant increase in English usage by young Pueblos, which further endangers Keres’ existence.

Furthermore, Keres isn’t a written language. For centuries, the Pueblo have relied on daily use within their homes and communities to maintain its vitality. “The community doesn’t want it written,” Pacheco says. 

Contact with the wider world has previously imperiled Indigenous ideas, an outcome Pacheco wants to avoid. “We believe [Keres] is a form of intellectual property, a tradition and artifact that is best served by empowering our people to preserve it,” he says.

From the Southwest to MIT

While he’s now passionate about linguistics, languages weren’t Pacheco’s first choice when considering an educational path. “I always admired [MIT alumnus and Nobel laureate] Richard Feynman,” he recalls. “I wanted to study physics.”

After earning an undergraduate degree from the University of New Mexico, Pacheco, who’d been working as a K-12 educator, began efforts to preserve Keres, increasing the language’s vitality and preserving its usefulness for, and value to, future generations. He sought permission and certification from the tribe to teach the language at the Santa Fe Indian School, an off-reservation boarding school. He soon discovered that a traditional Western approach to language learning wouldn’t suffice.

“Students weren’t taking the course to be scholars of the language; they wanted to learn it to build community and create opportunities to connect with elders,” Pacheco says. It was students’ advocacy, he notes, that led to the Keres learning initiative. While designing the course, however, he found gaps in his knowledge that led him to consider graduate study. 

“There are fascinating idiosyncrasies in Keres, including, for example, verb morphology — the ways in which verbs and verb sounds change,” he notes. “I wasn’t sure about how to teach them.” He sought to improve his understanding and ability by earning a master’s degree in learning design, innovation, and technology from Harvard University. While completing his studies there, he had another burst of inspiration.

“I thought a background in linguistics would prove useful,” he says. “An advisor told me about the Indigenous Languages Initiative at MIT and recommended I apply.” Pacheco knew of Professor Emeritus Noam Chomsky’s pioneering work in generative linguistics at the Institute and sought to learn more about the field’s potential to help him become a better, more effective educator and linguist. 

Upon arriving at MIT in 2024, Pacheco found himself embraced by faculty and students alike. “[MIT linguists] Adam Albright and Norvin Richards have been wonderfully supportive mentors, offering enthusiasm and expertise” he says. “I’ve benefited from MIT’s approach to linguistics and its use of scientific inquiry as a tool to explore language.” Engaging with other students working to preserve languages at risk of extinction continues to drive his work.

“MIT continually encourages us to use its resources, to collaborate, and to help one another find solutions to our unique challenges,” he says. “Networking, gathering good ideas, and having access to professors and students from a variety of disciplines is incredibly valuable.” 

MIT’s scholars, Pacheco says, are experienced with Indigenous language learning, education, and pedagogy.

Developing an organized approach to Keres research and instruction

While gratified that his work created opportunities for him to preserve and teach Keres, Pacheco marvels at his path to the Institute and its impact on his life. “It was my language, not my interest in physics, which led me to Harvard and MIT,” he says. “How did I end up at these places?”

An advantage of language and linguistics education at MIT is the rigor with which it explores language acquisition modeling and allows for alternatives to established systems. Pacheco is after new ideas for Keres language learning and education, working to develop an effective course based on generative linguistics that both preserves the Pueblos’ approach to community and offers an educational model students are likely to embrace. He’s already had opportunities to test novel theories and practices as an educator back home. 

“I was teaching students to use Keres as a programming tool,” he says. “We modeled a robot as a member of the community navigating a maze, and students would have to teach it to accept commands in Keres.” 

Pacheco also wants to explore community-centered language issues. He wants to standardize the development and education of community linguists, creating a cohort of scholars trained to use the tools he designs that are deeply invested in Keres’ preservation and instruction.

“We want to drive inquiries into Keres and how it’s taught,” he says, “while also centering Indigenous knowledge systems and expanding access to linguistics study for Indigenous scholars.”

Pacheco believes there’s value in exposing scholars and communities to the cultural and ideological exchanges he’s enjoyed between the sciences, humanities, Indigenous ideas, and experiences. “Indigenous scholars exist at MIT,” he says. “We’re here, and the Institute’s support helps preserve languages like Keres as important communal and cultural artifacts.” 

Pacheco is grateful for the opportunities his research at MIT have afforded him. While his education as a linguist and scholar continues, Pacheco’s community, culture, and support for Keres language learning remain top priorities.

“I want to amplify the impact in tribal language policy and Indigenous-centered education,” he says. “Language, its study, and its transmission is both science and art.”

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Researchers have developed a new method for monitoring iron flux — the movement and rate at which cells take in, store, use and release iron — in stem cells known as mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs). The system can provide insights within a minute about a cell’s ability to grow cartilage tissue for cartilage repair. 

The breakthrough offers a promising pathway toward more consistent and efficient manufacturing of high‑quality MSCs for regenerative therapies to treat joint diseases such as osteoarthritis, chronic joint degeneration conditions, and cartilage injuries.

The work was led by researchers from the Critical Analytics for Manufacturing Personalized-Medicine (CAMP) group within the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART), and was supported by the SMART Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) research group, in collaboration with MIT and the National University of Singapore (NUS).

A paper describing the work, “Cellular iron flux measurement by micromagnetic resonance relaxometry as a critical quality attribute of mesenchymal stromal cells,” was published in February in the journal Stem Cells Translational Medicine.

Regenerative therapies hold significant promise for patients with the potential to repair damaged tissues rather than simply manage symptoms. However, one of the biggest challenges in bringing these therapies to patients lies in the unpredictable quality of the MSC’s chondrogenic potential — a cell’s ability to develop and form cartilage tissue — during the in vitro manufacturing process.

Even when grown under controlled laboratory conditions, MSCs are prone to losing some of their potential and ability to form cartilage tissue, leading to inconsistent cartilage repair outcomes due to the varying quality of MSC batches. Existing tests that evaluate the quality of MSCs’ cartilage‑forming potential are destructive in nature, which causes irreversible damage to the cells being tested and renders them unusable for further therapeutic or manufacturing purposes.

In addition, the tests require a prolonged — up to 21-day — period for cells to grow. This slows decision‑making, extends production timelines, and can hinder the timely translation of MSC-based therapies into clinical use and delay treatment for patients. As MSCs can lose chondrogenic potential during this process, early assessment is essential for manufacturers to determine whether a batch should be continued or discontinued. Hence, there is a need for a reliable and rapid method to predict MSCs’ chondrogenic potential during the cell manufacturing process.

The new developement represents a rapid, non-destructive method to monitor iron flux in MSCs by measuring iron changes in spent media — residual components in the culture medium after cell growth. Using an inexpensive benchtop micromagnetic resonance relaxometry (µMRR) device, the approach enables real‑time monitoring of cellular iron changes without damaging the cells. The inexpensive µMRR device can be easily integrated into existing laboratories and manufacturing workflows, enabling routine, real‑time quality monitoring without significant infrastructure or cost barriers.

Iron homeostasis is a critical process that maintains normal levels of iron for cell function, maintaining the balance between providing sufficient iron for essential processes, while preventing toxic accumulation. The study found that iron homeostasis is highly correlated with the MSC’s chondrogenic potential, where significant iron uptake and accumulation will reduce the cell’s ability to form cartilage. The researchers also found that supplementing the cell growth process with ascorbic acid (AA) helps regulate iron homeostasis by limiting iron flux, thereby improving the MSC’s chondrogenic potential.

Using this novel method, spent media are collected as samples and treated with AA. The µMRR device is then used to track and provide real-time insights into small iron concentration changes within the spent media. These iron concentration changes reflect how MSCs take up and release iron and can provide an early indicator of whether a batch is likely to succeed in forming good cartilage.

These findings allow manufacturers to not only monitor MSCs quality for cartilage repair in real-time, but also to assess when, and to what extent, interventions such as AA supplementation are likely to be beneficial - supporting efficient manufacturing of more effective and consistent MSC‑based therapies.

“One of the key challenges in cartilage regeneration is the inability to reliably predict whether MSCs will retain their chondrogenic potential during manufacturing. Our study addresses this by introducing a rapid, non-destructive method to monitor iron flux dynamics as a novel critical quality attribute (CQA) of MSCs' chondrogenic capacity. This approach enables early identification of suboptimal cell batches during culture, enhancing quality control efficiency, reducing manufacturing costs, and accelerating clinical translation,” says Yanmeng Yang, CAMP postdoc and first author of the paper.

“Our research sheds light on a fundamental biological process that, until now, has been extremely difficult to measure. By monitoring iron flux in real-time without destroying the cells, we can gain actionable insights into a cell batch’s chondrogenic potential, which allows for early decision-making during the manufacturing process. The findings support µMRR‑based iron monitoring as an effective quality control strategy for MSC-based therapy manufacturing, paving the way for more consistent and clinically viable regenerative medicine for cartilage regeneration,” says MIT Professor Jongyoon Han, co-head CAMP PI, AMP PI, and corresponding author of the paper.

This method represents a promising step toward improving manufacturing consistency and functional characterisation of MSC-based cellular products. Beyond advancing cell therapy manufacturing, it contributes to the scientific industry studying iron biology by providing real-time iron flux measurements that were previously unavailable. The research also advances clinical translation of high-quality cell therapies for cartilage regeneration, bringing these closer to patients with joint degeneration conditions and cartilage injuries.

Building on these findings, the researchers plan to carry out future preclinical and clinical studies to expand this approach beyond quality control in manufacturing, with the aim of establishing µMRR as a validated method for the clinical translation of MSC-based therapies in patients for cartilage repair.

The research, conducted at SMART, was supported by the National Research Foundation Singapore under its Campus for Research Excellence and Technological Enterprise (CREATE) program.

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