Since their invention, magnetic information-storage devices have been shrinking. This size reduction has allowed technologists to squeeze more bits into smaller and smaller gadgets. Device makers would like to increase the storage density of magnetic devices further, but there is a hitch: they have almost reached the miniaturization limit of the 2D materials that they typically use. To solve that problem, researchers plan to move to the third dimension, a change that requires new methods to monitor and characterize magnetization patterns, something Claire Donnelly at the University of Cambridge, UK, and her colleagues at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich and at the Paul Scherrer Institute, Switzerland, are developing. Donnelly shared her latest results—which include uncovering a new 3D magnetic pattern—at the recent CMD2020GEFES conference, an online meeting that hosted talks on all aspects of condensed matter physics.
“Most of the [imaging] work that’s been done so far on magnetic materials has been carried out on planar systems or surfaces,” Donnelly says. “Moving to 3D offers a huge number of opportunities for advances.” To reach the third dimension, researchers could, for example, stack many hundreds of 100-nm-sized magnetic “bricks” on top of each other to create a micrometer-sized pillar.
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