Magnetic skyrmions created at room temperature - Could enable a completely unique type of memory

10/13/2015 - 06:33

Andy Fell


An exotic, swirling object with the sci-fi name of a “magnetic skyrmion” could be the future of nanoelectronics and memory storage. Physicists at UC Davis and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have now succeeded in making magnetic skyrmions, formerly found at temperatures close to absolute zero, at room temperature.

“This is a potentially new way to store information, and the energy costs are expected to be extremely low,” said Kai Liu, professor of physics at UC Davis and corresponding author of a paper on the work, published in the journal Nature Communications Oct. 8.

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Ref: Realization of ground-state artificial skyrmion lattices at room temperature. Nature Communications (2015) | DOI: 10.1038/ncomms9462