An international research team led by scientists from the CNRS French laboratories has discovered that magnetic nanobubbles known as skyrmions can be moved by electrical currents, attaining record speeds up to 900 meters/second.

Anticipated as future bits in computer memory, the tiny size of these nanobubbles (a few nanometers) may provide great computing and information storage capacity and low energy consumption.

Speedup

Until now, these nanobubbles moved no faster than 100 m/s, which is too slow for computing applications. But thanks to the use of an antiferromagnetic material as a medium, the scientists successfully made the skyrmions move 10 times faster.

These results, which were published in the journal Science, offer new prospects for developing higher-performance and less- energy-intensive computing devices.

This study is part of the SPIN national research program launched in January, which supports innovative research in spintronics, with a view to helping develop a more agile and enduring digital world.

Citation: Pham, V. T., Sisodia, N., Manici, I. D., Urrestarazu-Larrañaga, J., Bairagi, K., Pelloux-Prayer, J., Guedas, R., Buda-Prejbeanu, L. D., Auffret, S., Locatelli, A., Menteş, T. O., Pizzini, S., Kumar, P., Finco, A., Jacques, V., Gaudin, G., & Boulle, O. (2024). Fast current-induced skyrmion motion in synthetic antiferromagnets. Science. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.add5751