Light-operated hard drive of tomorrow

What do you get when you place a thin film of perovkite material used in solar cells on top of a magnetic substrate? More efficient hard drive technology. EPFL physicist László Forró and his team pave the way for the future of data storage.

“The key was to get the technology to work at room temperature,” explains László Forró, EPFL physicist. “We had already known that it was possible to rewrite magnetic spin using light, but you’d have to cool the apparatus to – 180 degrees Celsius.” Forró, along with his colleagues Bálint Náfrádi and Endre Horváth, succeeded at tuning one ferromagnet at room temperature with visible light, a proof of concept that establishes the foundations of a new generation of hard drives that will be physically smaller, faster, and cheaper, requiring less energy compared to today’s commercial hard drives.

The results are published in PNAS. The method is still experimental, but it may be used to build the next generation of memory-storage systems, with higher capacities and with low energy demands. The method provides a stand for the development of a new generation of magneto-optical hard drives.

Read more at EPFL

Image Credit: EPFL

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