"Colossal" Magnetoresistance to further revolutionise storage

Giant Magnetoresistance (GMR) revolutionised storage since its discovery some 20 years ago, winning the Nobel prize and allowing devices like the iPod to store massive amounts of data in tiny spaces. June 12th edition of Phys Rev Letters published a paper by Yang Ding and team of the Carnegie Institution’s High Pressure Synergetic Center (HPSync) describing a new approach yielding an effect 1000 times more powerful than GMR, dubbed Colossal Magnetoresistance (CMR).

The researchers found that when manganite was subjected to 230,000 times atmospheric pressure it underwent a transition from a ferromagnetic type (electron spins aligned) to an antiferromagnetic type (electron spins opposed). This transition was accompanied by a non-uniform structural Jahn-Teller effect distortion.

There's a long way to go before simple applications of the approach, but what were considered fundamental magnetic reading limits using magnetoresistance effects are again evaporating.

See Carnegie Institution for Science.