Latest Ferromagnetism Stories

Chinese scientists have shown that magnetic memory, logic and sensor cells can be made faster and more energy efficient by using an electric, not magnetic, field to flip the magnetization of the sensing layer only about halfway, rather than completely to the opposite direction. They describe the new cell design in the Journal of Applied Physics, which is published by the American Institute of Physics (AIP).Magnetic random access memory (or MRAM) cells have long been investigated as possible...

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...

Just as the path of photons of light can be directed by a mirror, atoms possessing a magnetic moment can be controlled using a magnetic mirror. Research reported in the Journal of Applied Physics investigates the feasibility of using magnetic domain walls to direct and ultimately trap individual atoms in a cloud of ultracold atoms."We are looking for ways to build magnetic systems that can manipulate atoms," says author Thomas Hayward of the University of Sheffield in the United...

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...

Theoretical spectroscopy and computational model reveal hidden ordered stateElectrons in complex matter sometimes arrange themselves into strange patterns, which remain shrouded in mystery. Finding the organizing principles and classifying their phases is an important challenge in understanding condensed matter.One such material is URu2Si2. "URu2Si2 is a man-made compound based on uranium, which undergoes an unknown phase transition," said Kristjan Haule of the Center for Materials...

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...

Researchers of Eindhoven University of Technology and the Radboud University Nijmegen in The Netherlands show for the first time why ordinary graphite is a permanent magnet at room temperature. The results are promising for new applications in nanotechnology, such as sensors and detectors. In particular graphite could be a promising candidate for a biosensor material. The results will appear online on 4 October in Nature Physics.Graphite is a well-known lubricant and forms the basis for...

An international team of physicists has for the first time observed magnetic behavior in an atomic gas, addressing a decades-old debate as to whether it is possible for a gas or liquid to become ferromagnetic and exhibit magnetic properties."Magnets are all around us "“ holding postcards on the refrigerator, pointing to magnetic north on a compass, and in speakers and headphones "“ yet some mysteries remain," says Joseph H. Thywissen, a professor of physics at the University of Toronto...

In finally answering an elusive scientific question, researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have shown that the selective placement of strain can alter the electronic phase and its spatial arrangement in correlated electron materials. This unique class of materials is commanding much attention now because they can display properties such as colossal magnetoresistance and high-temperature superconductivity, which are highly coveted...