Physicists observe an exotic 'multiferroic' state in an atomically thin material

MIT physicists have discovered an exotic "multiferroic" state in a material that is as thin as a single layer of atoms. Their observation is the first to confirm that multiferroic properties can exist in a perfectly two-dimensional material. The findings, published in Nature, pave the way for developing smaller, faster, and more efficient data-storage devices built with ultrathin multiferroic bits, as well as other new nanoscale structures.