Researchers use skyrmions to store information
Physicists of the University of Hamburg, Germany, managed
for the first time to individually write and delete single skyrmions, a
knot-like magnetic entity. Such vortex-shaped magnetic structures exhibit
unique properties which makes them promising candidates for future data storage
devices. Skyrmions have been in the focus of active research for the last
years; however, up to now these states have been merely investigated, a
controlled manipulation has not been achieved. Now this has been realized by scientists
from the group of Prof. Roland Wiesendanger in Hamburg, Germany: as Science
Magazine reports online on 09 th of August 2013, the creation and annihilation
of single skyrmions, corresponding to writing and deleting of information on a storage
device, has been demonstrated by these researchers. This work solves one of the
longstanding technical problems concerning the future use of skyrmions in
information technology.