University of Miami physicist and his collaborators describe
a novel approach to switch on and off magnetism, which can lead to a new
generation of better-performing electronic devices.
There is a big effort in industry to produce electrical
devices with more and faster memory and logic. Magnetic memory elements, such
as in a hard drive, and in the future in what is called MRAM (magnetic random
access memory), use electrical currents to encode information. However, the
heat which is generated is a significant problem, since it limits the density
of devices and hence the performance of computer chips.