Researchers from NIST, the University of Maryland, and the University of Paris XI have discovered that defects and impurities in magnetic nanowires significantly impact the speed at which information is processed and stored. These nanowires, which resemble a chocolate and vanilla milkshake straw, use magnetic domain walls to store information as 1s and 0s. The team found that disorder within the nanowire structure causes friction, which actually allows domain walls to move faster by enabling them to lose energy and “fall” down the wire.
The study, published in Physical Review Letters, suggests that disorder in these nanowires can increase the effective damping, which should affect the interpretation of most future domain wall experiments. This deeper understanding of how disorder impacts nanowire performance will help guide the development of next-generation magnetic storage and processing devices.
Source: https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2010/06/walls-falling-faster-solid-state-memory
Keywords: nanowires, disorder, domain, damping, friction
