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Phoenix666 writes:

National University of Singapore:

"The spin of the current carrying electrons, which basically represents the data you want to write, experiences minimal resistance in ferrimagnets. Imagine the difference in efficiency when you drive your car on an eight lane highway compared to a narrow city lane. While a ferromagnet is like a city street for an electron's spin, a ferrimagnet is a welcoming freeway where its spin or the underlying information can survive for a very long distance," explained Mr Rahul Mishra, who was part of the research team and a current doctoral candidate with the group.

Using an electronic current, the NUS researchers were able to write information in a ferrimagnet memory element which was 10 times more stable and 20 times more efficient than a ferromagnet.

For this discovery, Associate Professor Yang's team took advantage of the unique atomic arrangement in a ferrimagnet. "In ferrimagnets, the neighbouring atomic magnets are opposite to each other. The disturbance caused by one atom to an incoming spin is compensated by the next one, and as a result information travels faster and further with less power. We hope that the computing and storage industry can take advantage of our invention to improve the performance and data retention capabilities of emerging spin memories," said Associate Professor Yang.

The ferrimagnets are promised to make spintronics more practical.

Long spin coherence length and bulk-like spin–orbit torque in ferrimagnetic multilayers (DOI: 10.1038/s41563-018-0236-9) (DX)

Original Submission