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Abstract

The silicon-based technologies that is used today to access and compute information is reaching its limits. To further improve computing capacity, this essentially two-dimensional technology, as STUART PARKIN puts it, needs to give way to the three-dimensional approach of spintronic devices that use not only electric current but also the spin of the electrons. In this video, he explains how the research team created a new type of storage device. It consists of billions of so-called race tracks which are essentially vertical columns of magnetic material in which tiny magnetic regions representing zeros and ones are stored. These can be manipulated using a current of spin polarized electrons that can move information up and down these race tracks. During the last three to four years, the researchers discovered four distinct new physical phenomena that enable them to move the magnetic regions in these racetracks extremely efficiently with current pulses. This could pave the way to solid-state devices with about one hundred times the capacity of today's solid-state drives because of the three-dimensional nature of this new concept that is entirely derived from the new physics of spintronics.