A scientist from U. S Department of Energy’s (DOC) Argonne National Laboratory, Northern Illinois University, Zhill Xiao (Argonne materials Scientist) has demonstrated a new material. It is known as rewritable Magnetic Charge ice. It allows an original degree of control over magnetic fields and creates a new way for new computing technologies.
Magnetic charge ice could accelerate smaller and more powerful computer or even perform in quantum computing. It comes with data storage, memory and logic devices. This magnetic charge ice system has eight configurations instead of two. It has compressed storage capabilities and added functionality which is unavailable in recent technologies.
Xiao claimed, “Our work is the first success achieving an artificial ice of magnetic charges with controllable energy states. Our realization of tunable artificial magnetic charge ice is similar to synthetic of a dreamed material. It provides flexible platforms to advance our knowledge about artificial spin ices to create new physics phenomena and to achieve the desired functionalities for applications.”
For the last ten years, scientists are taking an interest in creating, analysis and make an effort to operate different properties of “artificial spin ices”. It’s due to spins have a lattice structure that follows the proton positioning ordering found in water ice. Scientists want this artificial spin ices to become as scientific playgrounds. There is the puzzle of magnetism that may be analyzed and disclosed. Scientists make many attempts and also get frustrated to achieve global and local control spin ice magnetic charges.
Scientists have decoupled the lattice structure of magnetic spins and magnetic charges. For adjusting the magnetic charge accurately and appropriately to any of eight possible charge configurations. They used bi-axis vector magnet. After that, they used a magnetic force microscope to demonstrate the material’s local write read erase multi-functionality at room temperature.
Credit: Yong-Lei Wang/Zhili Xiao
Magnetic charge ice is two dimensional. It has a very thin layer of atoms. It could also be applied to other thin materials like graphene. This is eco-friendly material and relatively cheap to produce.
Yong-Lei-Wang, formal postdoctoral research associate of Xiao, designed structure of new artificial magnetic ice structure and develop custom instrumentations for the research.
He said, “Although spin and magnetic charges are always correlated, they can be ordered in different ways. This work provides a new way of thinking solving problems. Instead of focusing on spins. We tackled the magnetic charges that allow more controllability.”