The growing zoology of skyrmions!

Spintronics is a field of research that focuses on the fundamental physics and applications of spin-based phenomena. To date spintronics has played a key role in the development of recording heads that are used in magnetic disk drives and in a high-performance, solid-state, non-volatile magnetic random access memory. A third spintronics technology, the magnetic Racetrack memory, has the potential to supplant magnetic disk drives: this article discusses the discovery of several novel magnetic nano-objects, so-called “skyrmions” that could encode the data within Racetrack Memory.