| Nov 18, 2025 |
Researchers find that magnetic skyrmions can behave like chiral fluids, which may be harnessed for fluidic logic in nanofabricated devices.
(Nanowerk News) In magnetic materials with antisymmetric exchange interactions, novel particle-like spin textures called magnetic skyrmions can appear and be manipulated by electrons. First observed in 2009, they have been created and controlled at room temperature in many materials.
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Skyrmions, as nonvolatile information carriers, are key in electronic and spintronic devices. Their size can be just a few nanometers, enabling high storage densities. They require low current to move, are topologically stable, and offer nonvolatility and radiation hardness for extreme environments.
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Over the past decade, most published reports in the field, both experimental and theoretical, have focused on the applications of individual isolated magnetic skyrmions. The main reason is that people aim to leverage the nanoscale size of a single magnetic skyrmion. However, isolated magnetic skyrmions are nanoparticle-like objects, like water molecules, which are extremely difficult to manipulate precisely.
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Consequently, the realization of skyrmion-based memory and logic has remained a significant challenge since the first observation of magnetic skyrmions in 2009. Particularly, fundamental operations for isolated-skyrmion-based logic computing, such as the precise duplication of a single skyrmion into two skyrmions as well as the merging of two skyrmions into one, are extremely difficult to achieve in experiments.
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Recently, a collaborative group of scientists, led by Professor Masahito Mochizuki from the Department of Applied Physics at Waseda University and including Assistant Professor Xichao Zhang from Waseda University, has investigated the fluid behaviors of many magnetic skyrmions flowing in nanostructured devices.
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This study was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (“Nanofluidic logic based on chiral skyrmion flows”).
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| Schematic illustration of the nanofluidic logic gate based on many nanoscale skyrmions flowing through an H-shaped junction. (Image: Professor Masahito Mochizuki and Assistant Professor Xichao Zhang, Waseda University)
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In this study, researchers report a transformative approach for realizing skyrmion logic based on fluidic principles, that is, the world’s first logic gate based on chiral skyrmion flows. They demonstrated through computational simulations that magnetic skyrmions can be easily manipulated and function like water flowing in nanofluidic channels, which significantly reduces the complexity of skyrmion-electronics technology. In nanoscale devices, controlling the flow of water is significantly easier than controlling an individual water molecule; the same holds true for particle-like skyrmions. The scientists proposed that the information is carried by fully developed flows of fluid-like skyrmions, rather than by individual skyrmions. They demonstrated that some basic logical operations can be realized based on interacting flows of skyrmions.
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The nanofluidic logic based on flowing skyrmions eliminates the need for deterministic creation, precise control, and detection of a single skyrmion in device operations. In principle, the thermal stability and annihilation of skyrmions will also cease to be a major concern in fluidic logic due to the dynamic supply of skyrmions from input ports. Additionally, there is no need to erase, recreate, or duplicate a single skyrmion in fluidic logic gates. The information carried by a fully developed skyrmion flow will never be lost in principle. Information can be duplicated or merged in a robust and straightforward manner via flow bifurcation or convergence.
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When asked about the motivation of their work, Asst. Prof. Zhang explained, “In the 1960s, Bell Labs researchers Willard Boyle and George Smith were working on magnetic bubble memory, and they realized that electric charges are the analog of magnetic bubbles. They thus invented the charge-coupled device, that is, the CCD, in which many electrons are stored and allowed to flow in a certain direction. In fact, most commercial electronic devices rely on the manipulation of charged particle flows. Magnetic skyrmion is the magnetic bubble’s successor. They are charged quasiparticles. We believe skyrmion-based devices should also benefit from the flow behavior of many skyrmions.”
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“Skyrmions, magnetic textures in magnets, are nothing more than patterns woven by atomic spins. Nevertheless, their collective behavior manifests as a fluid. Even more surprising is our discovery that such a skyrmion fluid can be utilized as a logic device. Our findings have demonstrated that the fluid behavior of skyrmion ensembles holds great potential both for fundamental science and for technological applications. At the same time, however, what we have revealed this time is only a small part of this potential. We intend to further advance our research, aiming to establish a new field of physics that may be called the hydrodynamics of nanoscale magnetic textures,” concludes Prof. Mochizuki.
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