Leeds physicists are leading a new £2.3m project to make new materials which would allow computer memory and other components to use magnetism rather than conventional electrical charges, paving the way for smaller, faster gadgets.
Magnetism in microelectronic components - spintronics - is already used for reading high performance hard disks, like those in iPods. A similar device can also store information magnetically on a memory chip, instead of needing an electric charge. Charges leak away and have to be replenished a thousand times a second, but magnetism doesn't require a power supply. It can also be used to control the flow of electrons in a component so a chip could re-configure itself in the most effective way for each calculation it handled.
The consortium is led by Professor Brian Hickey at Leeds and includes Cambridge, Imperial, Durham, Glasgow, Exeter and City universities and the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory. It will look at new and existing ways of applying spintronics, develop new materials and push the limits of our current understanding of magnetism. The group - Spin@RT - is funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and is supported by some of the world's biggest hard-drive and electronics manufacturers.
Leeds specialises in making magnetic materials and thanks to £240,000 from the Wolfson Foundation (and £210,000 from the University) they are now using a 'sputter' machine (pictured) which allows them to fabricate materials in layers with thickness control equivalent to adding or removing a single atom.
Posted: Jul 31,2006 by Ron Mertens