Information storage in permalloy modulated magnetic nanowires

Abstract A long piece of magnetic material shaped as a central cylindrical wire (diameter d = 50 nm) with two wider coaxial cylindrical portions (diameter D = 90 nm and thickness t = 100 nm) defines a bimodulated nanowire. Micromagnetism is invoked to study the equilibrium energy of the system under the variations of the positions of the modulations along the wire. The system can be thought of as composed of 5 independent elements (3 segments and 2 modulations) leading to 25 = 32 different magnetic configurations. We investigate the stability of the configurations depending on the positions of the modulations. The relative chirality of the modulations has negligible contributions to the energy and they have no effect in the stability of the stored configuration. However, the modulations are extremely important in pinning the domain walls that lead to consider each segment as independent from the rest. A phase diagram reporting the stability of the inscribed magnetic configurations is produced. The stability of the system was then tested under the action of external magnetic fields and it is found that more than 50 mT are necessary to alter the inscribed information. The main purpose of this paper is to find weather a prototype like this can complemented to be used as firmware or magnetic keys. Present results indicate that this is feasible.