Video: Building Memory One Atom at a Time

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In this video from IBM research labs, Almaden physicist Andreas Heinrich explains how he and his teammates started with 1 atom and a scanning tunneling microscope and eventually succeeded in storing one bit of magnetic information reliably in 12 atoms.

Andreas Heinrich, the project lead for IBMs efforts, explained in an interview that this tech may never be realized in part because it requires an entirely new type of manufacturing equipment to be built. However, IBM is learning how to manipulate atoms for storing bits and identified a new type of magnetism that could one day be used. Unlike the type of magnetism that keeps your magnets stuck to your fridge, IBM is looking at the reverse of those properties to make this highly dense type of memory.

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