Now that Easter is over, the eggs have all been hunted down, and the wonderful things long given up by our Catholic friends for Lent (from beer to bingo) can once again be enjoyed at leisure, scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have reported success with a different kind of egg and what this may mean for the future of low-power computer memory. While experimenting with extremely tiny (200 nanometers in diameter, which equates to billionths of a meter) nickel-iron magnets that are usually ellipse-shaped, the research team discovered that shaping them like eggs offered enough of a distortion to significantly change their magnetic properties. Probing these wee nanoeggs with lasers allowed the scientists to analyze how their electrons spin on a quantum level and how such spinning may differ from the way that they spin in, well, non-egg-shaped nanomagnets.

“Yes, yes, this is all very interesting. But get on with it, Fogarty! What does this mean to me?” I can almost hear you asking. And that’s a fair enough question. Scientists often like to carry on with the intricate details of their discoveries to people who, if not completely disinterested in such details, at least probably have no notion of what these details mean when applied to the big picture. Where’s Carl Sagan when you need him to break it down to the layman? I could use his help to wrap my own head around this as I try to explain it to you, but in his absence, I’ll do my best.

CC licensed Flickr photo shared by Minimalist Photography

Simply put: egg-shaped nanomagnets offer an exciting opportunity to create SpinRAM (spintronic random access memory), which could be used for quick access to data with less power required from a computer’s processor. The egg shape of the nanomagnets break up symmetric frequency patterns, giving human beings more control over these incredibly tiny processes than they would have with the steady patterns of traditionally used, ellipse-shaped nanomagnets.

NIST physicist Tom Silva says: “Intentional patterning of egg-like distortions into SpinRAM memory elements may facilitate more reliable switching. Also, this study has provided the Easter Bunny with an entirely new market for product development.”

The team’s findings are summed up in the paper Effects of shape distortions and imperfections on mode frequencies and collective linewidths in nanomagnets, published in the most recent issue of Physical Review B.