Scientists have unlocked the secret to creating stable dynamic skyrmions -- the nanoscale magnetic whirls that promise to meet our insatiable appetite for data storage.
The future of data storage is likely to be found in nanometer scale, stable magnetic whirls called skyrmions, which behave like particles in magnetic thin films. But creating these whirls has been notoriously difficult, requiring carefully-engineered multilayers or very specific bulk materials.
However, recent research published in Nature Communication could change that. Johan Åkerman, a spintronics researcher and a guest professor at Stockholm's KTH Royal Institute of Technology who co-led the study, says that the research enables an entirely new range of materials where skyrmions can be observed.
"Since there is an insatiable appetite for storing information, for uses such as mobile phones, computers, and particularly online, nano-skyrmions are very interesting as an information carrier," Åkerman says. "They can be made extremely small and are easily programmed using spin-polarized currents like in MRAM (magnetoresistive random-access memory)."
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