Imperial College researchers claim advance towards monopole magnet
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Researchers from Imperial College London have created a structure that acts like a single pole of a magnet and say the breakthrough means they are 'one step closer to isolating a magnetic monopole'.
Magnets have two magnetic poles, north and south, and whichever way a magnet is cut, it will always have these two poles. However, scientists have theorised that it must be possible to isolate a 'magnetic monopole', either north or south on its own, but until recently researchers have been unable to show this in experiments.
The Imperial researchers have now enabled nano sized magnets to behave like magnetic monopoles, by arranging them in a honeycomb structure. Previously, various scientists created monopole like behaviour in a material called 'spin ice'. In these materials, monopoles form only at -270°C. The Imperial researchers' structure contains magnetic monopoles at room temperature.
However, while the research team has been able to 'read' and 'write' patterns at room temperature, collective behaviour is only seen at temperatures of less than -223°C. A key challenge now is to develop a way to use these patterns to perform calculations, and to do so at room temperature.
Currently, one magnetic domain is used to store one bit of information. This research is said to suggest that a cluster of many domains could be used to solve complex computational problems in one calculation – akin to a neural network.
Dr Will Branford, pictured, an EPSRC Career Acceleration Fellow in the Department of Physics at Imperial College London, said: "Electronics manufacturers are trying all the time to squeeze more data into the same devices, or the same data into a tinier space for handheld devices like smart phones and mobile computers. However, the innate interaction between magnets has so far limited what they can do. In some new types of memory, manufacturers try to avoid the limitations of magnetism by avoiding using magnets altogether, using things like ferroelectric memory, memristors or antiferromagnets instead. However, these solutions are slow, expensive or hard to read out. Our philosophy is to harness the magnetic interactions, making them work in our favour."
