Jiansen Lu
The smallest magnetic data storage unit
January 24th 2012 19:35
Scientists from IBM and the German Center for Free-Electron Laser Science (CFEL) has successfully stored one magnetic bit of data with 12 atoms of iron, i.e we need only 96 iron atoms to store a full byte ( 8 bits) of data. The new storage data density will be at least 100 times denser than flash memory chips.
12-atom bit
The new technology used antiferromagnetism, while conventional hard drives used ferromagnetism. Antiferromagnetic atom rows can be spaced much more closely without interfering with each other in magnetic field. This technolgy requires that the nano magnets must be kept at a temperature of -268 Celsius degree .
Video: IBM stores binary data on just 12 atoms, one step closer to atomic data storage
How did the IBM researchers read and write these 12-atom bits? The answer is a scanning tunneling microscope (STM). Antiferromagnetism used to store a binary bit first. Then the STM is used to measure the magnetism of a given atom to see if the magnetic bit has a binary value of 0 or 1.
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