Researchers are working to harness magnetic vortices in an effort to create nanoscale antennae.
A research team is looking for methods to "synchronize the magnetic spins in nanoscale devices to build tiny yet more powerful signal-generating or receiving antennas and other electronics," Brookhaven National Laboratory news release reported.
This new research suggests that when stacked nanoscale magnetic vortices are separated by a thin layer of copper they can operate in unison.
In order to be successful the researchers must harness the power of electron "spin," which drives magnetism.
"Almost all of today's electronic technology, from the light bulb to the smartphone, involves the movement of charge," Brookhaven physicist Javier Pulecio, lead author on the new study, said in the news release. "But harnessing spin could open the door for much more compact and novel types of antennas that act as spin wave emitters, signal generators-such as the clocks that synchronize everything that goes on inside a computer-as well as memory and logic devices."
In order to harness spin one control its "evolution and spin configuration.
"If you grab a circular refrigerator magnet and place it under a microscope that could image electron spins, you would see the magnet has several regions called domains, where within each domain all the spins point in the same direction," group leader Yimei Zhu said in the news release. "If you were to shrink that magnet down to a size smaller than a red blood cell, the spins inside the magnet will begin to align themselves into unique spin textures."
A magnetic disc that has a radius of a mere 500 nanometers and a thickness of 25 nanometers cannot support multiple domains, causing the spins to align in a "hurricane-like rotational pattern" in an effort to reduce the magnetic energy. These spins rotate around the disc's core similarly to the eye of a hurricane; the vortex has four possible states: "up or down paired with clockwise or anticlockwise," the news release reported.
"Magnetic vortex-based oscillators can be tuned to operate at different narrowly defined frequencies, making them extremely flexible for telecommunications applications," Pulecio said. "They are also self-contained elements, about 100,000 times smaller than oscillators based on voltage instead of spin, so they could prove to be less expensive, consuming less electricity, and won't take up as much room on the device. That's especially important if you are talking about miniaturization for cell phones, wearable electronics, tablets, and so on."
