Researchers at Oxford University said it has patented so-called “spin transistor” technology which could increase the density of dataheld on storage devices.

The transistors developed by a research team are sensitive to the quantum mechanical spin of the electrons travelling through them, making them sensistive to the local magnetic field strength, the researchers said. But hard drive manufacturers face the difficulty of reading smaller regions. Currently, large magnetoresistive stacks are used in the read heads of disk drives. The ability to replace this with a magnetically sensistive transistor replaces the noisy amplification stages that hard drives currently need.

Source: The Inquirer