Scientists in a spin

Scientists at three UK universities have created novel ‘spintronic’ devices that could point the way for the next generation of more powerful and permanent data storage chips in computers.

The physicists from the Universities of Bath, Bristol and Leeds discovered a way to precisely control the pattern of magnetic fields in thin magnetic films, which can be used to store information.

The discovery is said to have important consequences for the IT industry, as current technology memory storage has limited scope to develop further. The density with which information can be stored magnetically in permanent memory (hard drives) is reaching a natural limit related to the size of the magnetic particles used. The much faster silicon-chip based random access memory (RAM) in computers loses the information stored when the power is switched off.

The key advance of the recent research has been in developing ways to use high-energy beams of gallium ions to artificially control the direction of the magnetic field in regions of cobalt films just a few atoms thick.