Individual holmium atoms adsorbed on magnesium oxide films can form highly stable magnets, according to a study done by Fabian Natterer at Switzerland’s Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) and colleagues. The team showed that the single-atom magnets can endure relatively high temperatures and strong external magnetic fields. The work could lead to the development of extremely high-density data storage devices.
Increasingly, data centres are coming under strain as we produce more and more information. One potential solution could lie in single-atom magnets, on which bits of data could be stored as long-lived magnetic quantum states. Previous studies have shown that these states can be easily manipulated, allowing data to be easily written and read out from the atoms. Furthermore, densely packing many atoms onto a surface would allow for vast amounts of data to be stored.
“Single-atom magnets offer an interesting perspective because quantum mechanics may offer shortcuts across their stability barriers that we could exploit in the future,” says Natterer. “This would be the last piece of the puzzle to atomic data recording.”
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