TMCnet News
Magnetic field computers 500 times faster(UPI Science News Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Researchers at Britain's University of Bath will lead a $1 million, three-year international project to develop magnetic fields for use in computers. The project could produce a way of carrying electrical signals without the need for wiring. Although WiFi Internet systems and mobile phones already use wireless technology, the electronics that create the wireless signals are too large to be used within individual microchips. The researchers, including scientists in Belgium and France, will look at ways of producing microwave energy by firing electrons into magnetic fields produced in semi-conductors that are only a few atoms wide and layered with magnets. The process -- called inverse electron spin resonance -- uses the magnetic field to deflect electrons and to modify their magnetic direction. That, say scientists, creates oscillations of the electrons that makes them produce microwave energy. That energy then can be used to broadcast electric signals in free space, without the weakening caused by wires. The research, if successful, would allow computers to become up to 500 times faster, yet remain the same size as they are today. |