Recently discovered phenomenon could provide a way to bypass the limits to Moore's Law

said braka 7:40 AM
Rather than reading and writing data one bit at a time by

changing the orientation of magnetized particles on a surface, as today's magnetic disks do, the new system would make use of tiny disturbances in magnetic orientation, which have been dubbed "skyrmions." These virtual particles, which occur on a thin metallic film sandwiched against a film of different metal, can be manipulated and controlled using electric fields, and can store data for long periods without the need for further energy input.
In 2016, a team led by MIT associate professor of materials science and engineering Geoffrey Beach documented the existence of skyrmions, but the particles' locations on a surface were entirely random. Now, Beach has collaborated with others to demonstrate experimentally for the first time that they can create these particles at will in specific locations, which is the next key requirement for using them in a  system. An efficient system for reading that data will also be needed to create a commercializable system.
The new findings are reported this week in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, in a paper by Beach, MIT postdoc Felix Buettner, and graduate student Ivan Lemesh, and 10 others at MIT and in Germany.


Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-10-phenomenon-bypass-limits-law.html#jCp