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Nanoscience

Single-atom data storage

Nature volume 543, pages 189–190 (2017)Cite this article

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The ultimate limit of classical data storage is a single-atom magnetic bit. Researchers have now achieved the writing and reading of individual atoms whose magnetic information can be retained for several hours. See Letter p.226

In 1993, the observation1 that a single molecule can behave like a magnet and store information opened a new field of research. It has since been shown that molecules can be targeted individually2 and engineered to have magnetic stability at temperatures well above that of liquid helium3. However, an open question has been whether it is possible to go to even smaller scales — down to a single atom. Thanks to the continuous and ingenious development of scanning probe microscopy technology, and an improvement in our understanding of the mechanisms that govern magnetization dynamics on the nanoscale, Natterer et al.4 now unambiguously achieve the ultimate limit of writing and reading information. On page 226, the authors show that single-atom data storage is possible using a holmium atom deposited on a thin magnesium oxide film.

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Figure 1: Magnetic memory at the single-atom level.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Roberta Sessoli is in the Department of Chemistry 'Ugo Schiff', University of Florence, 50019 Florence, Italy.,

    Roberta Sessoli

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  1. Roberta Sessoli
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Correspondence to Roberta Sessoli.

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Sessoli, R. Single-atom data storage. Nature 543, 189–190 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/543189a

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