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| RIKEN Press Release | December 26, 2007 |
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Massive boost in data storage now a possibility with nanowiresDiscovery of nanoscale magnetic organization points way to nanowire-based memory chips | |
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In the quest to pack more data onto microchips, nanowires have been the focus of a lot of research effort. The problem has been establishing control over the microscopic sectors in the nanoscale wires so that data written to them can be reliably stored and retrieved. RIKEN researchers investigating possible nanotechnology applications may have uncovered a solution with potentially widespread impact on everything from supercomputing to high-volume data storage. Logic and memory chip development has for decades followed 'Moore's Law,' the famed observation by Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel Corp., that the number of transistors on a microchip doubles roughly every two years. But some experts say that the physical limit of conventional microchips could be reached by about 2010. Recent studies have therefore focused on nanotechnology solutions, but no one has yet devised a means to control the direction of the magnetized particles to allow the 'on/off' switching by which data bits are stored and read. A further conundrum is that shrinking the particles of materials used in conventional memory and logic devices causes them to lose their magnetic orientation at room temperature, thus erasing the data. Researchers at RIKEN's Frontier Research System and the University of Tokyo cooperated in a project to look at one possible solution using ferromagnetic wires just 30 nanometers in width. Adopting recently developed nanowire-forming processes, the team created zig-zag grids, or 'arrays,' arranged to receive minute electrical pulses at specific micro-sectors of the wire. The nanowire arrays were created through a metal-deposition process on a membrane that could be imaged by an electron microscope as the researchers subjected it to varying temperatures and magnetic field intensities. Photographs of the wires snapped at near-molecule-level magnification showed random - and thus unusable - magnetic directional organization when electrical pulses were applied to individual sectors of the membrane grid. But at the moment a slight magnetic field was applied to the entire membrane surface the randomness disappeared, and the magnetic direction of the micro-sectors became controllably 'off' or 'on.' This is the first documented achievement of reliable switching control at nano level, the researchers said. The team also found that as long as a slight magnetic field was applied, the magnetic direction of the individual grid sectors was maintained with a consistency that reached 100% at certain magnetic field strengths. Too much or too little of the applied magnetic field caused the randomness to reappear, they noted. No major difference in stability was seen at room temperature, which suggests the phenomenon's possible use outside of laboratory conditions. Finding ways to utilize this newly discovered behavior of nanomaterials in logic devices and magnetic memories is the next challenge, but with nanoscale transistors, the prospect of thumbnail-size supercomputers is perfectly feasible. And an interesting new question concerning even high-definition movies would be not how many digitized videos could ultimately be squeezed onto a consumer-priced home system for instantaneous access and playback, but how many movies the average cinema buff will be able to afford. The research by Yoshihiko Togawa at RIKEN, Takashi Kimura at the University of Tokyo, and a team of nanomaterials specialists at RIKEN's Frontier Research System and Hitachi High-Tech Fielding Co. is described in Applied Physics Letters, the peer-reviewed journal of the American Institute of Physics.
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| RIKEN, one of Japan's leading research institutes, conducts basic and applied experimental research in a wide range of science and technology fields including physics, chemistry, medical science, biology and engineering. Initially established as a private research foundation in Tokyo in 1917, RIKEN became an independent administrative institution in 2003. For more information, visit www.riken.jp | |
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