MRAM breakthrough

By utilising magnetic random-access memory (MRAM), computers would retain their data during power loss and hard drives the size of a coin could store over 100 films.

The current challenge, however, is the design of a fast, reliable and inexpensive way to build stable and densely packed magnetic memory cells.

A team of researchers at The Johns Hopkins University, writing in the current issue of Physical Review Letters, has come up with one possible answer: tiny, irregularly shaped cobalt or nickel rings that can serve as memory cells.

These "nanorings" can store a great quantity of information. They are also immune to the problem of "stray" magnetic fields, which are fields that "leak" from other kinds of magnets and can interfere with magnets next to them.

"It's the asymmetrical design that's the breakthrough, but we are also very excited about the fast, efficient and inexpensive method we came up with for making them," said paper co-author Frank Q. Zhu, a doctoral candidate in the Henry A. Rowland Department of Physics and Astronomy in the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences at Johns Hopkins.