Contacts: Christoforos Moutafis, Physics
Mentors: Marc Bax, Panchromos Limited
The Thin Film Magnetism group at the Cavendish, led by Dr Crispin Barnes, has developed a number of small-scale memory storage and biotagging technologies in recent years. The new technology for this i-Team project relies on topological switching of magnetic elements to create non-volatile memory.
The technology can apply to both computer memory and small-scale biological tagging applications. It allows ultra-fast writing of data (5ns), multiple reading techniques, and the memory is stable once written, without power being required.
The system works by creating magnetic bubbles and manipulating the wall between the inner and outer zones which are magnetised in opposite directions. Such bubbles can be less than 160nm in size, and work is in progress to investigate reducing this further.
The task for the i-Team is to investigate possible applications of the technology, and to determine how much further the technology would need to be developed to make those applications commercially viable.