Memory - Page 3

Researchers at the National Synchrotron Light Source II at Brookhaven National Laboratory, University of California Davis, University of Colorado Springs, Stockholm University, National Institute of Standards and Technology, University of California San Diego, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, and Elettra Sincrotrone Trieste have conducted an experiment with magnetic materials and ultrafast lasers that could advance energy-efficient data storage.

"We wanted to study the physics of light-magnet interaction," said Rahul Jangid, who led the data analysis for the project while earning his Ph.D. in materials science and engineering at UC Davis under associate professor Roopali Kukreja. "What happens when you hit a magnetic domain with very short pulses of laser light?"

Scientists at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, University of California, Cornell University, University of Nebraska, Arizona State University and Tsinghua University have found a unique property of the material Ba(Pb,Bi)O₃: it exhibits extremely high spin orbit torque, a property useful in the field of spintronics. The materials was previously found to act as a rare type of superconductor that could operate at higher temperatures. 

The combination of these two properties makes this and similar materials potentially important in developing the next generation of fast, efficient memory and computing devices.

Researchers from The Ohio State University in the U.S, Uppsala University in Sweden and the UK's University of Exeter have used a novel technique to confirm a previously undetected physics phenomenon that could be used to improve data storage in the next generation of computer devices.

Spintronic memories, like those used in some high-tech computers and satellites, use magnetic states generated by an electron's intrinsic angular momentum to store and read information. Depending on its physical motion, an electron's spin produces a magnetic current. Known as the "spin Hall effect," this has key applications for magnetic materials across many different fields, ranging from low power electronics to fundamental quantum mechanics.

Researchers from Tohoku University, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Guangxi Normal University, Kyushu University and Japan Atomic Energy Agency have reported a significant breakthrough which could revolutionize next-generation electronics by enabling non-volatility, large-scale integration, low power consumption, high speed, and high reliability in spintronic devices.

Spintronic devices, such as magnetic random access memory (MRAM), utilize the magnetization direction of ferromagnetic materials for information storage and rely on spin current, a flow of spin angular momentum, for reading and writing data. Conventional semiconductor electronics have faced limitations in achieving these qualities. However, the emergence of three-terminal spintronic devices, which employ separate current paths for writing and reading information, presents a solution with reduced writing errors and increased writing speed. Nevertheless, the challenge of reducing energy consumption during information writing, specifically magnetization switching, remains a critical concern.

Researchers from MIT and Tohoku University have reported a representative effect of the anomalous dynamics at play when an electric current is applied to a class of magnetic materials called non-collinear antiferromagnets. 

Non-collinear antiferromagnets have properties distinct from conventional magnetic materials—in traditional collinear magnets, the magnetic moments align in a collinear fashion. However, in non-collinear ones, the moments form finite angles between one another. Scientists describe these non-collinear arrangements as a single order parameter, the octupole moment, which has been demonstrated to be critical for determining the exotic properties of the materials.

Researchers from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel have made a recent discovery that could change the face of spintronics research.

A spintronics device developed by Professor Capua's lab

They discovered that the most important equation used to describe magnetization dynamics, namely the Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert (LLG) equation, also applies to the optical domain. Consequently, they found that the helicity-dependent optical control of the magnetization state emerges naturally from their calculations. This is a very surprising result since the LLG equation was considered to describe much slower dynamics and it was not expected to yield a meaningful outcome also at the optical limit.

Researchers from the University of Nottingham, Diamond Light Source, Czech Academy of Sciences and The University of New South Wales have shown for the first time how electrical creation and control of magnetic vortices in an antiferromagnet can be achieved, a discovery that could increase the data storage capacity and speed of next generation devices.

The team used magnetic imaging techniques to map the structure of newly formed magnetic vortices and demonstrate their back-and-forth movement due to alternating electrical pulses. 

Researchers have found that lasers can generate stable patterns of electron spins in a thin layer of semiconductor material, a discovery that may help lead to advanced spin-based memory and computing. The scientists have revealed that lasers could generate complex stable patterns of electron spins called “spin textures” in thin films of semiconductors. These spin textures could help lead to what may be the holy grail of spintronics, a superefficient spin-based transistor.

The new findings are based on how light has momentum, just as a physical object moving through space does, even though light does not have mass. This means that light shining on an object can exert a force. Whereas the linear momentum of light supplies a push in the direction that light is moving, the angular momentum of light applies torque.

Materials scientists from the University of Groningen describe in two separate papers how complex oxides can be used to create very energy-efficient magneto-electric spin-orbit (MESO) devices and memristive devices with reduced dimensions.

The big challenges in next-gen microchips design are to design chips that are more energy efficient and to design devices that combine memory and logic (memristors). Tamalika Banerjee, Professor of Spintronics of Functional Materials at the Zernike Institute for Advanced Materials, University of Groningen, is looking at a range of quantum materials to create new devices. "Our approach is to study these materials and their interfaces, but always with an eye on applications, such as memory or the combination of memory and logic".

Researchers at MIT have proposed a new approach to making qubits and controlling them to read and write data. The method, which is theoretical at this stage, is based on measuring and controlling the spins of atomic nuclei, using beams of light from two lasers of slightly different colors. 

Nuclear spins have long been recognized as potential building blocks for quantum-based information processing and communications systems, and so have photons, the elementary particles that are discreet packets, or "quanta," of electromagnetic radiation. But coaxing these two quantum objects to work together was difficult because atomic nuclei and photons barely interact, and their natural frequencies differ by six to nine orders of magnitude. In the new process developed by the MIT team, the difference in the frequency of an incoming laser beam matches the transition frequencies of the nuclear spin, nudging the nuclear spin to flip a certain way.