IBM Research Division, Almaden Research Center, 650 Harry Road, San Jose, CA 95120, USA.
Science. 2012 Jan 13;335(6065):196-9. doi: 10.1126/science.1214131.
Control of magnetism on the atomic scale is becoming essential as data storage devices are miniaturized. We show that antiferromagnetic nanostructures, composed of just a few Fe atoms on a surface, exhibit two magnetic states, the Néel states, that are stable for hours at low temperature. For the smallest structures, we observed transitions between Néel states due to quantum tunneling of magnetization. We sensed the magnetic states of the designed structures using spin-polarized tunneling and switched between them electrically with nanosecond speed. Tailoring the properties of neighboring antiferromagnetic nanostructures enables a low-temperature demonstration of dense nonvolatile storage of information.
随着数据存储设备的小型化，对原子级磁控制的需求变得至关重要。我们展示了由表面上仅几个铁原子组成的反铁磁纳米结构表现出两种磁状态，即奈耳状态，在低温下稳定数小时。对于最小的结构，我们观察到由于磁化量子隧穿而导致的奈耳状态之间的转变。我们使用自旋极化隧穿来感应设计结构的磁状态，并以纳秒级的速度进行电切换。通过调整相邻反铁磁纳米结构的性质，可以在低温下演示密集的非易失性信息存储。
