Magnetics Business & Technology - Summer 2017 - 13

RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT
New Ways of Representing Information Could
Transform Digital Technology

Another unique characteristic about topological excitations is
that they can be moved at significant speed with a small amount of
current, allowing for fast read and write operations if, for example,
they are placed on a track that runs in front of a read/write head,
Ale said. Such an approach would make it possible to explore novel,
3-D approaches to chip design, enabling storage capabilities of 100
Terabits per square inch, 100 times more than the current limit of 1
Terabit per square inch in laboratory demos.

Many people who use computers and other digital devices are
aware that all the words and images displayed on their monitors boil
down to a sequence of ones and zeros. But few likely appreciate
what is behind those ones and zeros: microscopic arrays of "magnetic moments" (imagine tiny bar magnets with positive and negative
poles). When aligned in parallel in ferromagnetic materials such as
iron, these moments create patterns and streams of magnetic bits,
the ones and zeros that are the lifeblood of all things digital.
These magnetic bits are stable against perturbations, such as
R&D Continued on Page 20
from heat, by a form of strength in numbers: any
moment that inadvertently has its orientation reversed is flipped back by the magnetic interaction
with the rest of the aligned moments in the bit.
For decades, engineers have been able to increase
computing capabilities by shrinking these magnetic domains using advances in manufacturing and
novel techniques for reading and writing the data.
In recent years, however, it has become clear
that this approach cannot go on indefinitely. As it
turns out, moments start to wobble out of alignment when the size of the bit gets too small and
the interaction energy keeping them aligned is exceeded by the surrounding thermal energy making
the all-important digital bits unstable and unreliable for storage or logic. For a number of highperformance electronic devices, that thermodyQUALITY CONTROL SYSTEMS
MAGNETIC MEASURING EQUIPMENT
namic requirement for magnetic bit size, called the
superparamagnetic limit, is about to be reached,
FLUXMETERS
HARD MAGNETIC MATERIALS
meaning that eking out more memory in the same
amount of space will no longer be possible.
HELMHOLTZ COILS
SOFT MAGNETIC MATERIALS
DARPA's Topological Excitations in Electronics
MAGNETIC SCANNERS
CEMENTED CARBIDES
program, announced today, aims to investigate new
MEASURING COILS
FEEBLY MAGNETIC MATERIALS
ways to arrange these moments in novel geometries
that are much more stable than the conventional
parallel arrangement. If successful, these new configurations could enable bits of data to be made
radically smaller than possible today, potentially
yielding a 100-fold increase in the amount of storage
achievable on a chip. It could also enable designs for
completely new computer logic concepts and even
for topologically protected "quantum" bits, the basis
for long-sought quantum computers.
AUTOMATION SYSTEMS
HIGH-EFFICIENCY MAGNETIZERS
"We've known for some time that there are
some magnetic interactions that favor the magMAGNETIZING COILS
MANUAL
netic moments being canted in a v-shape rather
AND MAGNETIZERS
SEMI-AUTOMATED
than the parallel arrangement, which yield a much
more stable structure than having them all in paralFOR ALL MAGNETIC
FULLY AUTOMATED
lel," said Rosa Alejandra "Ale" Lukaszew, a program
APPLICATIONS
HANDLING WORKSTATIONS
manager in DARPA's Defense Sciences Office. "The
canted interaction doesn't allow the electrons to
Founded in 1959, Laboratorio Elettroﬁsico is a global company
line up parallel to each other, so in order to fit
specializing in engineering, designing, and manufacturing the
them in a small region they must be configured
world's most precise magnetizing and magnetic measuring equipment.
in a special pattern. These unique geometric patterns, called topological excitations, are very stable
ITALY * BELGIUM * SILICON VALLEY * MICHIGAN * SHANGHAI * INDIA
and maintain their geometry even when shrunk to
www.laboratorio.elettroﬁsico.com
very small sizes. But only recently have we had the
multiscale models, advanced metrology tools, and
understanding of proper material combinations to
LE is present at:
fully explore this phenomenon."

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Magnetics Business & Technology - Summer 2017
