Engineers Use Shaped Light to Control Magnetism, Opening Door to Faster Data Storage
What Happened
Engineers at the University of California San Diego have developed a technique that uses specially shaped and highly concentrated laser light to switch a material's magnetic state without needing an external magnetic field. The team demonstrated the method in a magnetic material with nine alternating layers of platinum and cobalt, overcoming limitations of earlier approaches. Researchers say the method could enable data to be stored more densely and written far more quickly. Because light delivers energy rapidly and precisely, the optical switching process could be more than 1,000 times faster than conventional magnetic-field-based techniques. The findings were published in Nature Communications.
Key Takeaways
The breakthrough could pave the way for faster, smaller, and more energy-efficient memory and data-storage technologies, although researchers say further work is needed before the technique can be integrated into commercial computer chips.