Cooperation between physicists at the Faculty of Physics, Lomonosov Moscow State University, and from the Max-Plank Institute of Microstructure Physics (Germany) lead to a new fundamental mechanism of controling atoms as memory devices.
Memory elements and logic devices formed from singles atoms — an idea that has long inspired the not only the futurists minds, but also scientists, engineers and technologists. Unfortunately, the dark side of fantastic properties and characteristics of these devices is their high sensitivity to small system fluctuations. Due this the dynamics of such systems in real world can be unpredictable. Therefore the study of those systems control mechanisms is one of the most actual problems of modern science. Magnetic field is the main and proven tool for the magnetic properties manipulating but in this case is inconvenient and inefficient due to its non-locality at the atomic scale. Electric field has not this limitation and their strong localization can be realized by using a scanning tunneling microscope (STM). The electric field of the STM tip can lead to a local change of some physical properties of the "atom-surface" system: the crystal anisotropy field, the tunneling frequency etc. In this case, the influence of the magnetic field on the atoms under action of local electric field will be drastically different. Thus, the combined effect of magnetic and electric fields can be used to selectively switch between the finite spin states of individual atoms. This can led to new foundation for the new methods of recording information in the atomic systems.
The results of this research have been published in the paper: O.P. Polyakov and V.S. Stepanyuk, “Tuning an atomic switch on a surface with electric and magnetic fields,” J. of Phys. Chem. Lett. 6, pp. 3698–3701 (2015).