Egg shaped nanomagnets to store data on comps

NEW YORK, USA: Magnetics researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) found that 'eggcentric' nanomagnets used to make low-power computer memories, says an article published on NIST's website.

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As part of NIST research on nanoscale magnetic materials, devices and measurement methods to support development of future magnetic data storage systems, the researchers used electron-beam lithography to make thousands of nickel-iron magnets.

Each magnet is ordinarily shaped like an ellipse, a slightly flattened circle. The researchers found that even small distortions in magnet shape can lead to significant changes in magnetic properties.

"Changes in the spin orientation can propagate through the magnet like waves at different frequencies. The more egg-like the magnet, the more complex the wave patterns and their related frequencies. Shaping magnets like eggs breaks up a symmetric frequency pattern found in ellipse structures and thus offers an opportunity to customize and control the switching process," says the report.

The researchers believe that the egg study results may be useful in developing random-access memories (RAM) based on interactions between electron spins and magnetized surfaces. Spin-RAM is one approach to making future memories that could provide high-speed access to data while reducing processor power needs by storing data permanently in ever-smaller devices.