Smaller, faster and cheaper memory chips without permanent magnets

Memory devices including disk drives, flash drives and RAM are an essential components of computers, phones, electronic appliances and cars but current memory devices have drawbacks: dynamic RAM memory has to be refreshed periodically, static RAM data is lost when the power is off, flash memory lacks speed, and all existing memory technologies are challenged when it comes to miniaturisation.

Consequently, memory devices are a bottleneck limiting performance. In order to achieve a substantial improvement in computation speed, scientists are developing smaller and denser memory devices that operate with high speed and low power consumption.

One solution is so-called magnetless spin memory (MSM) developed by Prof Yossi Paltiel and research student Oren Ben-Dor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Harvey M. Krueger Family Center for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, together with researchers from the Weizmann Institute of Science. MSM  is claimed to eliminate the need for permanent magnets in memory devices.

A paper describing their work - A chiral-based magnetic memory device without a permanent magnet - is published in Nature Communications. Contributors include Shira Yochelis at Hebrew University of Jerusalem; plus Shinto P Mathew and Ron Naaman at the Weizmann Institute of Science.