Scientists from NIST and UC Davis have developed a new method to create magnetic skyrmions at room temperature, a breakthrough that could lead to more efficient and powerful computer memory. Skyrmions are ring-shaped magnetic structures that could be used in spintronics, a field that uses magnetic effects for data storage and processing.
The team created skyrmions using an array of tiny cobalt disks on a cobalt-palladium thin film. They used polarized neutron reflectometry at NIST’s Center for Neutron Research to observe the skyrmions, which were stable at room temperature without requiring extreme magnetic fields or low temperatures.
This discovery opens up new possibilities for using skyrmions in real-world technologies, as they are more stable and require less power to manipulate than other methods proposed for spintronics. The next step is to develop ways to move the skyrmions for practical applications in data storage and processing.
Keywords: Magnetic, Skyrmions, Data, Storage, Nanoelectronic
