Honeycombs of Magnets Could Lead to New Type of Computer Processing
Imperial College London (03/30/12) Simon Levey
Imperial College London researchers say they have developed a new material using nano-sized magnets that could lead to unique types of electronic devices with much greater processing capacity than current technologies. The researchers have shown that a honeycomb pattern of nano-sized magnets introduces competition between neighboring magnets and reduces the problems caused by these interactions by 66 percent. The researchers also found that large arrays of these nano-magnets can be used to store computable information. The research suggests that a cluster of many magnetic domains could be able to solve a complex computational problem in a single calculation. "Our philosophy is to harness the magnetic interactions, making them work in our favor," says Imperial College London researcher Will Branford. Previous studies have shown that external magnetic fields can cause the magnetic domain of each bar to ichange state, which affects the interaction between that bar and its two neighboring bars in the honeycomb. It is this pattern of magnetic states that could be computer data, according to Branford. "This is something we can take advantage of to compute complex problems because many different outcomes are possible, and we can differentiate between them electronically," he says.
Imperial College London (03/30/12) Simon Levey
Imperial College London researchers say they have developed a new material using nano-sized magnets that could lead to unique types of electronic devices with much greater processing capacity than current technologies. The researchers have shown that a honeycomb pattern of nano-sized magnets introduces competition between neighboring magnets and reduces the problems caused by these interactions by 66 percent. The researchers also found that large arrays of these nano-magnets can be used to store computable information. The research suggests that a cluster of many magnetic domains could be able to solve a complex computational problem in a single calculation. "Our philosophy is to harness the magnetic interactions, making them work in our favor," says Imperial College London researcher Will Branford. Previous studies have shown that external magnetic fields can cause the magnetic domain of each bar to ichange state, which affects the interaction between that bar and its two neighboring bars in the honeycomb. It is this pattern of magnetic states that could be computer data, according to Branford. "This is something we can take advantage of to compute complex problems because many different outcomes are possible, and we can differentiate between them electronically," he says.
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