RESEARCHERS LAY THE FOUNDATION FOR FUTURE ELECTRONIC COMPONENTS WITH PURPOSE-DESIGNED PROPERTIES

摘要

Magnetic vortex structures, called skyrmions, could in the future store and process information very efficiently and form the basis for high-frequency components, thanks to the efforts of a team of physicists from Technische Universitaet Munchen (TUM), the University of Cologne (Germany) and the Ecole Polytechnique Federate de Lausanne (Switzerland). For the first time, the team has succeeded in characterizing the electromagnetic properties of insulating, semiconducting and conducting skyrmion materials and developed a unified theoretical description of their behaviour. More than six years ago, physicists at TUM discovered extremely stable magnetic vortex structures in a metallic alloy of manganese and silicon. Since magnetic vortices are microscopic and easy to move, computer components may need 10,000 times less power with this technology than today to store much larger volumes of data. Also, the typical resonance frequencies of the skyrmions are in the microwave range - the frequency range of mobile phones, Wi-Fi and many types of microelectronic remote controls. Thanks to the robustness of the magnetic vortices and their ease of excitability, skyrmion materials could also be the basis for highly-efficient yet very small microwave transmitters and receivers.