BIMACOMPULINES · Development of bistable thin film lines and nanowires for magnetic computing

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Project objective

This project aims to develop magnetic bistable lines for magnetic computing. Bistability is a known effect in macroscopic wires or ribbons but it has never been achieved in thin films or nanowires. The physical principle behind bistability is based on developing a helical anisotropy so the magnetization has only two possible states of minimal energy, depending on the chirality.In order to get a helical magnetic configuration across the thickness of the film, the exchange energy has to be weakened to minimize the otherwise huge energy that an in-plane domain wall would have. A way to do that is inserting layers of a weaker ferromagnet (like Gadolinium or CuCo) in the bulk of the primary ferromagnet.Bistability in nanowires would be the final stage of the project. Following the knowledge developed on films, it is expected that a similar behaviour could be observed in nanowires. They could be deposited by electrodeposition on porous membranes with a rotating magnetic field (to achieve the helical configuration) and dissolve the membrane afterwards. A bistable film could be patterned into tracks with only two single states of magnetization (easily read as 0 and 1).The speed of switching is very high and the current required for the switching could be quite low (and the same current could be used to switch an arbitrary number of tracks/wires, in this way minimizing the power consumed). There are huge obvious applications to the computing world, where Europe has done very little research to date (transmitting magnetization states between reading heads or tunnel barriers or simply transmit a large word with only one gate that would change the state of all the tracks-wires).The final approach on bistable nanowires is the next step to further miniaturization. The outcome of this research could open a large number of research lines but also a good background work for European computing companies, far behind in general from the Americans or Asians.

Original text from CORDIS.

Participants

• UNIVERSIDAD POLITÉCNICA DE MADRIDCoordinatorCity levelSpain

Links

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