Skyrmions will increase the capacity of the hard drive by 20 times. Free Technical Library News

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Skyrmions will increase the capacity of the hard drive by 20 times

25.08.2013

Scientists at the University of Hamburg have learned how to create and destroy individual magnetic swirls from atoms, or the so-called skyrmions. It is assumed that in the future this may help increase the density of data storage in magnetic drives.

Information in a hard disk is stored on the surface of a rotating magnetic platter. It is written by changing the orientation of the magnetic field of individual sections of the material, known as domains. A group of domains with one direction of the magnetic field forms one bit of information. However, with a decrease in the size of the domains, which is necessary for a further increase in density, the phenomenon of superparamagnetism manifests itself - when the magnetic field in the areas of the plate surface takes the same direction as in the neighboring areas.

Skyrmions do not have this drawback and remain stable regardless of what properties neighboring areas have, said Kristen von Bergman, one of the members of the scientific team. At the same time, the diameter of the skyrmion is 300 atoms, which in theory makes it possible to increase the capacity of a magnetic storage device by a factor of 20 compared to modern solutions.

The experiment was carried out on a thin film of palladium, iron and iridium. The magnetic vortices were controlled using a scanning tunneling microscope. A stream of electrons with a certain spin orientation was passed through the microscope head, which created or destroyed a swirl on the film.

Despite the breakthrough, it is currently not possible to bring the new technology to the market. The fact is that the control of skyrmions was carried out in laboratory conditions at a temperature of 4,2 kelvin, that is, almost at a temperature of absolute zero (-269 degrees Celsius).

In addition, scientists were able to form or remove no more than four skyrmions at one time, and only in 60% of cases they were able to do this, which is unacceptable for the technology that is planned to be used to store information.

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