Electronic devices such as mobile phones and tablets spur on a
scientific race to find smaller and smaller information processing and
storage elements. One of the challenges in this race is to reproduce
certain magnetic effects at nanometre scale.
An international collaboration of scientists led by researchers from the
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona Department of Physics and the Institut
Catala de Nanociencia i Nanotecnologia, and with the participation of
the Universitat de Barcelona, has been able to reproduce in particles
measuring 10 to 20 nanometres a magnetic phenomenon of great importance
in magnetic devices: the antiferromagnetic coupling between
layers.
This phenomenon appears when coupling layers of materials with different
magnetic properties, which allows controlling the magnetic behaviour of
the whole device. This property has very important technological
applications. For example, it forms an important part of data reading
systems found in hard drives and in the MRAM memories of computers and
mobile devices.
Researchers have managed for the first time to reproduce this phenomenon
in nanoscopic materials, measuring a mere few tens of atoms in diameter.
They managed to do this by using iron-oxide particles surrounded by a
thin layer of manganese-oxide and vice versa: manganese-oxide particles
covered by a layer of iron-oxide. The discovery provides an
unprecedented control of the magnetic behaviour of nanoparticles, since
it permits controlling and easily adjusting their properties without
having to manipulate their shape or composition, solely by controlling
the temperature and the magnetic fields surrounding it.
UBA; Dec 17, 2013
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