Nanowerk October 5, 2020 The fast creation of topological phases in matter requires massive reorientation of charge or spin degrees of freedom. An international team of researchers (Germany, Belgium, USA – MIT, Italy, the Netherlands) report the picosecond emergence of an extended topological phase that comprises many magnetic skyrmions. The nucleation of this phase, followed in real time via single-shot soft X-ray scattering after infrared laser excitation, is mediated by a transient topological fluctuation state. This state is enabled by the presence of a time-reversal symmetry-breaking perpendicular magnetic field and exists for less than 300 ps. Atomistic simulations indicate that the […]
Category Archives: Data storage
Memory in a metal, enabled by quantum geometry
Phys.org September 1, 2020 Previous research had shown that when tungsten ditelluride is in a topological state, the special arrangement of atoms in its layers can produce Weyl nodes which will exhibit unique electronic properties, such as zero resistance conduction. An international team of researchers (USA – UC Berkeley, Stanford University, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Texas A&M, South Korea) made odd numbered layers slide relative to even-number layers in tungsten ditelluride. The arrangement of these atomic layers represents 0 and 1 for data storage. They made use of Berry curvature to read information out. This material platform works ideally for […]
Researchers manipulate two bits in one atom
Phys.org September 1, 2020 An international team of researchers (the Netherlands, Chile, Spain) has shown that it is possible to gain independent access to both the spin and orbital degrees of freedom of a single atom, inciting and probing excitations of each moment. By coordinating a single Fe atom atop the nitrogen site of the Cu2N lattice, they created a single-atom system with a large zero-field splitting and an unquenched uniaxial orbital moment that closely approaches the free-atom value. They demonstrated a full reversal of the orbital moment through a single-electron tunneling event between the tip and Fe atom, a […]
New technique may enable all-optical data-center networks
EurekAlert June 22, 2020 The rapid growth in the amount of data being transferred within data centres creates challenges for the future scalability of electronically switched data-centre networks. As an alternative photonic integration platforms have been demonstrated with nanosecond-scale optical switching times. However, switching times are limited by the clock and data recovery time. Researchers in the UK have shown that using the measurement and storage of clock phase values in a synchronized network, the data recovery times can be under 625 ps. Their approach uses the measurement and storage of clock phase values in a synchronized network to simplify clock […]
Combining magnetic data storage and logic
Phys.org June 16, 2020 Researchers in Switzerland built racetrack memory managed to perform logical operations directly within memory element. The racetrack memory elements work by using current pulses to move tiny magnetic domains up and down nanowires that are just a few hundred nanometres thick. In these domains, all the magnetic moments are oriented in the same direction and can thus be used to represent the binary states 0 and 1. They use an electric current to reverse the polarity of the magnetic regions, thereby performing a NOT operation on the stored data. By eliminating the need for the mechanical […]
Lasers Write Data Into Glass
IEEE Spectrum May 29, 2020 Optical data storage was demonstrated in 2013 by researchers in UK. Under Project Silica, last November Microsoft completed its first proof of concept by writing the 1978 film Superman on a single small piece of glass and retrieving it. Researchers could theoretically store up to 360 terabytes of data on a disc the size of a DVD. The laser’s pulse deforms the glass at its focal point, forming a tiny 3D structure called a voxel makes it possible to represent several bits of data per voxel. Reading data from the glass requires an entirely different […]
Introducing the light-operated hard drives of tomorrow
Phys.org March 10, 2020 An international team of researchers (Switzerland, Spain) present a method for reversible, light-induced tuning of ferromagnetism at room temperature using a halide perovskite/oxide perovskite heterostructure. They showed that photoinduced charge carriers from the CH3NH3PbI3 photovoltaic perovskite efficiently dope the thin La0.7Sr0.3MnO3 film and decrease the magnetization of the ferromagnetic state, allowing rapid rewriting of the magnetic bit. The method is still experimental, but it may be used to build the next generation of memory-storage systems, with higher capacities and with low energy demands. The research opens avenues for magnetooptical memory devices…read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Storing data in everyday objects
Science Daily December 9, 2019 DNA storage offers substantial information density and exceptional half-life. An international team of researchers (Switzerland, Israel) devised a ‘DNA-of-things’ (DoT) storage architecture to produce materials with immutable memory. In a DoT framework, DNA molecules record the data, and these molecules are then encapsulated in nanometer silica beads, which are fused into various materials that are used to print or cast objects in any shape. They applied DoT to three-dimensionally print a Stanford Bunny that contained a 45 kB digital DNA blueprint for its synthesis. Then they synthesized five generations of the bunny, each from the memory […]
Molecular eraser enables better data storage and computers for AI
EurekAlert November 27, 2019 The bottom up approaches for atomic and molecular electronics, quantum computation, and data storage, all rely on a well-developed understanding of materials at the atomic scale. Researchers in Canada have developed a scanning tunneling microscope (STM) charge characterization technique which reduces the influence of the typically perturbative STM tip field for this purpose. Using the technique, they observed single molecule binding events to atomically defined reactive sites. They developed a simplified error correction tool for automated hydrogen lithography and incorporated the molecular repassivation technique as the primary rewriting mechanism in ultra-dense atomic data storage designs. The […]
Molecular thumb drives: Researchers store digital images in metabolite molecules
Science Daily July 3, 2019 Researchers at Brown University have demonstrated that the metabolome (arrays of liquid mixtures containing sugars, amino acids and other types of small molecules) is an information-rich molecular system with diverse chemical dimensions which could be harnessed for information storage and processing. As a proof of principle, they demonstrated a workflow for representing abstract data in synthetic mixtures of metabolites. They wrote more than 100,000 bits of digital image data into metabolomes and stored that could be decoded with accuracy exceeding 99% using multi-mass logistic regression. These early demonstrations provide insight into some of the benefits […]