A group of scientists developed skyrmions which are the next generation of data storage and processing devices.
Skyrmions are nanometer-sized vortex-like structures in magnetic fields that on the surface of the magnet. These have a greater potential to store much denser quantities of data compared to the current capacity of magnetic data storage techniques. Skyrmionics is an emerging science that deals with data storage and processing devices.
These scientists based in the UK and US are from the Universities of Birmingham, Bristol, and Colorado, and Boulder.
Transfer of data encoded will use less power than the current capacity of data storage because of the shape of these skyrmion structures.
Scientists have to find a way to arrange these structures to make them able to store and transfer data.
Their findings were published in Nature Physics where they showed various ways of combining multiple skyrmions together in structures that they coined as 'skyrmion bags' that allow storing of denser data.
"The challenge of improving our data storage is becoming increasingly urgent," explains Mark Dennis, Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Birmingham and lead author of the study. "We will need new technological approaches to increase the amount of data we want to store in our computers, phones, and other devices, and skyrmion bags might be a route to this. Rather than using trains of single skyrmions to encode binary bits, each skyrmion bag can hold any number of skyrmions, massively increasing the potential for data storage."
Computer simulations were utilized in modeling the technique in magnetic devices and were successful in experiments that deal with liquid crystals.
"It's particularly exciting to see this technology at work in liquid crystal since it opens up new possibilities for advances in areas such as display screens, sensors or even solar cells," adds co-lead author, Dr David Foster, at the University of Bristol.
Professor Tony Skyrme of the University of Birmingham originally proposed the theoretical model of skyrmions in the 1960s.
