UMD Team Receives Award from DARPA Fast and Curious Program

An on-chip electronic device under optical and magnetic examinations in Gong lab.

A team of US researchers led by Professor Cheng Gong has been developing new computing hardware that holds the potential to outperform silicon-based transistors by 100 to 1000 times in both energy consumption and operation speed. By achieving these goals, computers will work much faster, with less heat generated in operations.

The project is supported by the Fast and Curious program from Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), with an award up to $5.7M. Cheng Gong, an associate professor in electrical engineering (ECE), is leading this team effort in building and benchmarking the new type of spintronic logic devices.

“Instead of using electrons as electric charge to carry information, we are using electron spin, an intrinsic quantum mechanical property, as the information carrier. This new paradigm holds the potential to minimize heat byproducts, with widespread impacts in working conditions of personal computers, workstations, and data centers.” said Cheng Gong, the project’s lead principal investigator.

When electronic charges flow through a solid-state device, the charges' collisions with materials slow down the flow and generate heat, just like how light bulbs radiate heat when turned on. The team proposes to use voltage to alter the properties of magnetoelectric materials, and by doing so, the states of electron spins can be reconfigured to encode information. Given electric current is no longer a prerequisite for this process, energy consumption can be low and operation speed can be fast.

“It is imperative that we accelerate the transition to a new generation of computing hardware. It could deliver greater energy efficiency and faster speed to meet the growing computational demands of the AI era,” said Sennur Ulukus, ECE department chair. “I am thrilled to see that DARPA launched this ambitious initiative, and proud that Professor Gong is leading a multi-institutional team to take on this groundbreaking research.”

With reduced energy consumption, the new computing hardware may also bring hopes to thermal management. The growing issue of heat dissipation in electronics has presented a major challenge for years. “A new electronics technology with greater energy efficiency is a worthy goal to address in advanced computing. Professor Cheng Gong’s research agenda on efficient and fast computational hardware exemplifies our commitment to that mission,” said Clark School Dean Samuel Graham.

“Over the years, I have witnessed the research achievements in Professor Cheng Gong’s group, spanning fundamental physics and device innovation. This strong foundation positions his team well to tackle innovative challenges in microelectronic devices,” said Don Woodbury, Director of Innovation and Partnerships at the University of Maryland's Clark School of Engineering and former DARPA program manager and office director. “DARPA has long been a driving force behind technological breakthroughs. I am excited about Professor Gong's DARPA award being used to advance 2D magnetoelectric materials that are being developed in UMD’s Joint Research Laboratories.”

Recent Publications

The Gong group has recently published a few research outcomes in the emerging field of van der Waals multiferroic heterostructures and devices [1-3], which could lay a helpful foundation for their development of spintronic logic devices in this DARPA project.

1. Q. Wang, B. Xin, C. Liu, H. Zhang, Y. Ma, M. Lopez, H. Wu, Q. Tan, G. Zhang, H. Chang, X. Ling, E. E. Rodriguez, A. V. Davydov, X. Zhang, W.-H. Wang, E. Y. Tsymbal, C. Gong. "Room-temperature multiferroicity in all-van der Waals heterostructures." Science 393, 714–718 (2026).

2.T. Xie, Q. Wang, H. Zhang, K. Acharya, J. Chen, C. Liu, Z. Song, S. A. Deitemyer, H. S. Arachchige, Q. Tan, A. F. May, S. H. Lee, M. A. Susner, Z. Mao, M. A. McGuire, X. Ling, D. Mandrus, X. Zhang, S.-J. Gong, T. R. Paudel, R. Ramesh, E. Y. Tsymbal, C Gong, "Tailorable multiferroic tunnel junctions from all-van der Waals multilayer stacking." Nature Nanotechnology 21, 366–373 (2026).

3. S. Liang, Y. Ma, B. Xin, S. Siddique, C. F., O. Popova, S. M. Neumayer, P. Maksymovych, M. L. Chin, Y. Wang, H. Zhang, H. S. Arachchige, M. A. Susner, B. S. Conner, D. Mandrus, T. E. Murphy, J. Xiao, J. J. Cha, W.-H. Wang, X. Zhang, R. Ramesh, C. Gong, "Interferroic magnetoelectric coupling at CuCrP2S6/Fe3GeTe2 van der Waals heterojunctions." Nature Electronics 9, 23–32 (2026).

Published November 5, 2026