A team of outstanding scientists in the field of modern magnetic
nanotechnologies illustrates the state of the art in several areas of
advanced magneto-electronic devices, magnetic micro-electromechanical
systems and high density information storage technologies.
The physics and chemistry of nano-scale systems have made rapid advances
and there are real prospects of translating exciting scientific findings
into a new generation of processes and high technology products with a
potential impact on several industrial sectors.
In particular the development of nano-structured magnetic materials
plays a leading role in the increasing miniaturization of devices with
superior performances. The application areas considered are:
i) "magneto-electronics", where the control of electron spins in
magnetic hetero-structures offers new and improved functionalities in
devices of integrated digital electronics. Magnetic random access
memories, MRAM are among the principal applications for new non-volatile
RAM with fast dynamics, toward the pico-, femto-second range.
ii) "magnetic MEMS" (micro-electro-mechanical systems), which are the
integration of mechanical and electro/ferromagnetic elements
(micro-actuators and sensors) with conventional electronics MEMS,
promise a revolution in several product categories. In fact the proposed
integration enables the development of smart products, where sensors can
gather information from the environment by measuring thermal, magnetic,
electric, mechanical, biological chemical, optical characteristics and
the electronic section processes the information and the actuator
promotes the action realizing a complete control of the environment.
iii) "Magnetic recording" is a leading technology in the information
storage domain and the most relevant application in the field of
magnetics, showing surprising continuous progress over several decades
towards the limit of terabit per square inch of areal density.>
