racetrack memory tagged posts

Anti-skyrmions on a racetrack © MPI of Microstructure Physics

Scientists have discovered a new kind of magnetic nano-object in a novel material that could serve as a magnetic bit with cloaking properties to make a magnetic disk drive with no moving parts – a Racetrack Memory – a reality in the near future. Today’s world, rapidly changing because of “big data,” is encapsulated in trillions of tiny magnetic objects — magnetic bits – each of which stores one bit of data in magnetic disk drives.

Most digital data is stored in the cloud as magnetic bits within massive numbers of magnetic disk drives. Over the past several decades these magnetic bits have shrunk by many orders of magnitude, reaching limits where the boundaries of these magnetic regions can have special properties...

The magnetic structure of a skyrmion is symmetrical around its core; arrows indicate the direction of spin. Credit: Ill./©: Benjamin Krüger

JGU and MIT joint teams have for the first time achieved targeted shifting of individual skyrmions at room temperature using electrical impulses. The idea is that electronic storage units (bits) will not be stored on rotating hard disks as is currently standard practice but on a nanowire in the form of magnetic vortex structures, ie skyrmions, using a process similar to that of a shift register. The magnetic skyrmion bits would be rapidly accessible, while storage density would be high and there would be improved energy efficiency.

Magnetic skyrmions are special spin configurations that can occur in materials especially in thin layer structures when ...