Discovery could expand number of materials used in next-gen computing

An international research team, working with cutting-edge technology at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, has made a discovery that may dramatically expand the materials used in next-generation, energy-efficient memory and logic devices.

The team, which includes Nebraska’s Abdelghani Laraoui, assistant professor of mechanical and materials engineering, successfully demonstrated for the first time the imaging of magnetic skyrmions at room temperature in composition engineered magnetic materials. The team observed the tiny, vortex-like particles in these magnetic materials using a nitrogen-vacancy scanning probe in Laraoui’s lab.

“This discovery is a huge step forward because, until now, scientists could only observe these skyrmions in bulk chiral magnetic materials at very low temperatures,” Laraoui said. “Being able to study them at room temperature opens up a whole new world of applications and possibilities.”

Traditional hard disk drives use the direction of the magnetization of magnetic materials to store binary data. The magnetization can be controlled with magnetic field, light or electrical current, enabling high density data storage. However, when the magnetic bits get smaller, they are more susceptible to thermal noise and defects in the material that can compromise data integrity.

Manipulating skyrmions with an electrical current can make next-generation computing and memory devices work more efficiently. Demonstrating this at room temperature and with less-expensive made materials will change the future for next-generation computing, memory and logic devices, Laraoui said. 

Other research team members from the University of Nebraska­–Lincoln include Jeffrey Shield, department chair and professor of mechanical and materials engineering; Adam Erickson and Suchit Sarin, materials engineering graduate students; and Hamed Vakili, Suvechhya Lamichhane, Edward Schwartz, Sy-Hwang Liou and Alexey Kovalev, all physics researchers. The team also includes Qihan Zhang, Lanxin Jia, and Jingsheng Chen from National University of Singapore, Chaozhong Li and Guozhi Chai from Lanzhou University in China and Ilja Fescenko from the University of Latvia. 

The research is summarized in the Oct. 28 edition of the journal ACS Nano.