Researchers from Japan's RIKEN center discovered that skyrmions can be manipulated thermally using an electron beam. The researcher say that such a method could be used to develop low-energy memory and logic devices - in which the info is coded by the skyrmions.
In ferromagnetic materials, each atom acts like a tiny bar magnet. Usually all those "magnets" point in the same direction, but sometimes they can create skyrmions - "whirls" in the magnetic orientation of those atoms (see image above).
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Posted: Mar 26,2014 by Ron Mertens