Wired up

A UK team plans to develop a tiny sensor that can read the data from nano-scale magnetic circuits.

The researchers, at

and

universities, believe magnetic devices could replace silicon in some applications because they generally do not require power to retain data.

In some cases, magnetic nanotechnology devices may also offer higher device density, lower power consumption, improved reliability or additional functionality compared with silicon-based devices.

Chris Marrows, the principal investigator from Leeds, said his group hopes to develop a network of magnetic nanowires that could process information. The magnetic polarisation of various regions, or domains, of the wire would represent the binary numbers of digital information.

While there are many research groups around the world who have created similar magnetic nanowires, Marrows said all of them face a giant obstacle that keeps them from bringing the technology to commercialisation.

'The problem we're trying to solve in this project is how to get the magnetic information out of the circuit,' he said.