In thin strips, skyrmions are tiny, tornado-like 2D swirls in which the atoms’ magnetic orientations vary continuously and symmetrically.
Credit: Karin Everschor-Sitte and Matthias Sitte/Wikipedia
Scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) with colleagues elsewhere have employed neutron imaging and a reconstruction algorithm to reveal for the first time the 3D shapes and dynamics of very small tornado-like atomic magnetic arrangements in bulk materials.
These collective atomic arrangements, called skyrmions – if fully characterized and understood – could be used to process and store information in a densely packed form that uses several orders of magnitude less energy than is typical now.
The conventional, semiconductor-based method of processing information in binary form (on or off, 0 or 1) employs electrical charge states that must be constantly refreshed by current which encounters resistance as it passes through transistors and connectors. That’s the main reason that computers get hot.
But manipulating and storing information in stable magnetic states would require much less current (and heat) and allow much faster switching time between one state and another. This research field is called spintronics because it utilizes the spin – inherent magnetic polarity – of atomic particles and nanostructures instead of electric charge.
The NIST-led team is exploring one promising spintronic candidate: a vortex-like formation of atoms called a magnetic skyrmion. It arises naturally in certain kinds of atomic lattices in response to magnetic and electrical properties of the surrounding atoms. Skyrmions are typically in the range of 20 to 200 nanometers (billionths of a meter) in size. A human hair is about 100,000 nanometers wide.
In two dimensions, skyrmions take the shape of disks in which the atoms’ individual mag ..
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