Spintronic memory breakthrough

An international team of researchers has found a way to encode information in electron spins - a technique that promises to be able to create smaller, faster memory for computers.

Although this idea (called Spintronics ) has been extensively studied for more than a decade, researchers still claim their work is a breakthrough for a number of reasons.

First, the information is encrypted for 100 seconds, some time ago it was not achieved in the spintronics prototypes. In addition, their approach allows data to be encoded on phosphorus atoms, making data easily read and updated by silicon devices - the kind of material used by many computers today. .

Researchers - from the University of Florida (USA), University of Utah (USA), University of London (UK) and University of Sydney (Australia) - have published their findings on the latest issue of Science magazine.

Using the device in the University of Florida's National High School Magnetic Laboratory (NHMFL), researchers can control the magnetic (or spin) characteristics of electrons and nuclei that they orbit around. They used strong magnetic fields to guide spin, cold temperatures to control the movement of atoms.

The research was funded by the US National Science Foundation (NSF), Florida State, the Australian Research Council, the British Council for Physical Science and Engineering Research and the Royal Commission for the 1851 British Exhibition.