“We have demonstrated a new way to fabricate and use a magnetic device which, in a nanometric scale, can controllably move information along the three dimensions of space,” said Amalio Fernández-Pacheco from the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge.
Nano-magnets in an electron microscope, along with a gas injector, were used to 3D print a suspended scaffold on a 2D silicon substrate. After 3D nano-printing, magnetic material was deposited over the ensemble. By combining precise fabrication protocol with an tailor-made laser system, the researchers have demonstrated the detection of structures which are almost completely suspended and have widths of 300nm.
“Not only have we demonstrated a big leap in nanofabrication capacities, but, importantly, we have also developed a system which allows us to look at these tiny devices in a relatively simple way,” noted lead researcher Dédalo Sanz-Hernández. “The information within the device can be read using a single laser in dark-field configuration.”
“Projects such as this open the path to the development of a completely new generation of magnetic devices that can store move and process information in a very efficient way by exploiting the three dimensions of space,” Fernández-Pacheco concluded.