Controlling the Spin for Better Electronics (1 of 5) (IMAGE)

American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

Controlling the Spin for Better Electronics (1 of 5)

Caption

The image shows a magnetic skyrmion in a hexagonal atom arrangement (transparant spheres). The cones represent the magnetic moments and point up (red) in the skyrmion center and down (green) around it. The rotational sense of the skyrmion for a given system is always the same, as the other rotational sense has a higher energy due to an anisotropic exchange interaction. The magnetic skyrmion in PdFe/Ir(111) that can be created and annihilated with small currents from a scanning tunneling microscope tip consists of roughly 270 surface atoms. This image relates to a paper that appeared in the Aug. 9, 2013, issue of Science, published by AAAS. The paper, by Niklas Romming at the University of Hamburg in Hamburg, Germany, and colleagues was titled, "Writing and Deleting Single Magnetic Skyrmions."

Credit

[Image courtesy of the group of Prof. R. Wiesendanger, University of Hamburg]

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