The amount of data we create every single day is insane. Current disks are coming to their limits and we need to search for new materials. Perhaps we could use thin films of manganese germanide.
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Humans haven’t even dreamed about the capacities of current hard drives. But as their capacity increases the amount of data we store rises as well. Or actually even quicker. So, many research teams are working on new materials and technologies that could help us with the flood of data.
A team from the Ohio State University comes with magnetic structures that reminisce hedgehogs at an atomic level. Using them could bring dramatically large disk capacity saving both data-centers and regular users for some time.
Jay Gupta and his colleagues used a special magnetic microscope to showcase structures from an unusual material manganese germanide that is applied as a thin film. Compared to common magnets such as iron little helixes similar to DNA get created in the film. Material scientists discovered a whole new zoo of magnetic nanostructures in them which they call hedgehogs, anti-hedgehogs, skyrmions, or merons. All while being much smaller than current magnetic structures on a hard drive.
These new magnetic animals could be used to develop a new generation of data storage devices as current technologies are getting to their limits. This is the reason we need to find new materials to store the insane amounts of data we create daily.
The researched used a modified tunnel microscope. With it, they got images of the magnetic structure with an atomic resolution. Apart from many other things they noticed that in certain areas these structures resemble hedgehogs. Of course, they are nano-hedgehogs with a diameter of just 10 nanometers. Current magnetic bits in drives have a diameter of about 50 nanometers.
The research also shows that the structures can be manipulated with an electric current or magnetic fields. This suggests we could use much less energy to read and write data than in current generations of disks. Gupta believes their magnetic hedgehogs have tremendous potential. But there is still a lot of research to be done.
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