Latest Ferromagnetic materials Stories

Tomorrow's nonvolatile memory devices "“ computer memory that can retain stored information even when not powered "“ will profoundly change electronics, and Cornell University researchers have discovered a new way of measuring and optimizing their performance.Using a very fast oscilloscope, researchers led by Dan Ralph, the Horace White Professor of Physics, and Robert Buhrman, the J.E. Sweet Professor of Applied and Engineering Physics, have figured out how to quantify the strength of...

The work could lead to improved methodologies for creating materials by designScientists have given us a plethora of new materials "“ all created by combining individual elements under varying temperatures and other conditions. But to tweak an intermetallic compound even more, in order to give it the attributes you desire, you have to go deeper and re-arrange individual atoms.It's a process similar to what bioengineers employ when they add and delete genes to create synthetic organisms, and...

It's not hard to argue in favor of alternatives to fossil fuels these days, but one popular argument "“ domestic energy security "“ may be standing on very shaky legs. A lot of rare metals are needed to make photovoltaic panels, rare earth magnets for wind generators, fuel cells and high-capacity batteries for hybrid and electric vehicles. But most industrialized nations, including the United States, are almost entirely dependent on foreign sources for those metals. The only way this is...

TOWNSVILLE, Australia, Sept. 29 /PRNewswire/ -- Iron Glen Holdings Limited is pleased to announce that the drilling program for their highly prospective and extremely well located tenement 40 kilometers south west of Townsville has commenced. Based upon previous seismic surveys, soil sampling and analysis and fieldwork the company anticipated that this program would involve 6 drill holes drilled to a depth of approximately 100 meters. However, the recently completed Gravity Survey has...

Research is closing in on the next-generation of ultra-high-density magneto-optical storage devices that could store more than 6,000 Terabits (6 petabits) of data, more than 70 times the contents of the entire U.S. Library of Congress, on a single 5-inch disc. Yet the vast storage amount is limited by the ability to write data quickly enough to the device. In the Journal of Applied Physics, researchers at Sun Yat-Sen University in China have demonstrated a way to record on ferromagnetic films...

Breakthrough paves way to store and process information in novel spin-electronicsProcessing large amounts of information in today's electronics requires large amounts of power, which results in heating. Heat can ruin modern electronics by potentially damaging the stuff that makes them work--the ever smaller and denser structures in a computer's "brain," the microprocessor that incorporates all of its logic functions.So, researchers have been investigating something called...

After running a series of complex computer simulations, researchers have found that flaws in the structure of magnetic nanoscale wires play an important role in determining the operating speed of novel devices using such nanowires to store and process information. The finding*, made by researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the University of Maryland, and the University of Paris XI, will help to deepen the physical understanding and guide the...

UCLA team couples quantum dots, silicon for room-temperature functionalityAs the electronics industry works toward developing smaller and more compact devices, the need to create new types of scaled-down semiconductors that are more efficient and use less power has become essential.In a study to be published in the April issue of Nature Materials (currently available online), researchers from UCLA's Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science describe the creation of a new...

Speaking before a House Subcommittee, a distinguished U.S. scientist demonstrated how increased rare-earth research and development could create new multi-billion-dollar industriesKarl A. Gschneidner Jr., a senior metallurgist at the U.S. Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory, today cautioned members of a Congressional panel that "rare-earth research in the USA on mineral extraction, rare-earth separation, processing of the oxides into metallic alloys and other useful forms, substitution,...

Researchers in Chicago and London have developed a method for controlling the properties of magnets that could be used to improve the storage capacity of next-generation computer hard drives.Magnets that can readily switch their polarity are widely used in the computer industry for data storage, but they present an engineering challenge: A magnet's polarity must be easily switched when writing data to memory, but be difficult to switch when storing or reading it.These conflicting requirements...