Computers seem to get more powerful every day as the semiconductor industry finds new ways of cramming more and more transistors and capacitors onto a silicon chip. The magnetic-recording industry, meanwhile, has steadily been able to shrink the size of the device that reads information from magnetic hard disks, such that most desktop computers can now store several gigabytes of data.
There has, however, been remarkably little technological overlap between the magnetic-recording and semiconductor industries. Now however, the two fields are now coming together through a new discipline called "magnetoelectronics". Researchers are trying to investigate if magnetic materials - in the form of thin films or multilayers - can be used in electronic components and circuits.
In the April issue of Physics World, Jo de Boeck and Gustaaf Borghs of the Inter-university Micro-electronics Center (IMEC), Belgium explain the expanding field of magnetoelectronics.