Research team from South Korea has discovered a physical phenomenon that makes ‘zero-electricity’ memory element that consumes no electricity possible.
Professor Woo Seong-hoon of KIST’s (Korea Institute of Science and Technology) Spin Convergence Research Group had carried out co-research with a team led by Professor Geoffrey Beach of MIT Department of Materials Science and Engineering and found out a method that can run memory element without any electricity by utilizing spin properties of an element.
They have become the first group to implement movement of domain wall by utilizing spin wave that had been proposed only theoretically.
Global researches have been taking place in order to apply structure of ‘domain wall’, which separates electric domain that has different magnetic properties and has high mobility, stability, and cheap manufacturing process, to next-generation memory elements. However there were limitations in ‘electricity consumption’ that critical value of current that is consumed in order to move structure of ‘domain wall’ did not have that much advantage compared to current electronic elements. Although there had been researches in order to reduce critical value of current, there were still no clear solutions.
Research teams broke fixed idea that domain wall can only be moved by using current electric method by finding out that it is possible to move domain walls effectively without any electricity consumption by using ‘spin wave’, which is an unique wave form of spin that occurs from collision of two domain walls. They have investigated a theory that it is possible to have elements with no electricity since it is possible to change present status of domain walls without any introduction of outside current. They also showed that spin wave with strong size can be formed without any electricity consumption by utilizing collision between two domain walls.
“Problems regarding ultra-low electricity are seen as a huge issue since amount of information that single Smart device has to process is increasing geometrically.” said Professor Woo Seong-hoon. “This new approach using spin element will greatly contribute to entire industries that are related to next-generation memories.”
Result from this research was published on the 31st (Korea time) on ‘Nature Physics’ which is the highest prestige scientific journal in physical field.
Staff Reporter Song, Hyeyoung | hybrid@etnews.com