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JULY 2019 I PCB007 MAGAZINE 65 companies. We can co-develop this PCB tech- nology and process that can be applied at both companies. Williams: Wow! As a fellow old board rat, I find this really interesting. What do you think the timeline is? Chiem: All I can tell you is that it is an ongo- ing iterative process as design adjustments are made after each batch of PCBs are built and tested until the process is perfected. Williams: It's exciting to work with you. I know you're doing a lot of great things here, and I'm looking forward to what you come up with next. Anyone who needs high-quality flex and rigid-flex PCBs can contact Van and the team at Prototron, and they will take care of you. Thanks for taking the time today to talk. Chiem: Of course. I am always available to help. PCB007 This column appeared previously in the July 2019 issue of Design007 Magazine. Steve Williams is the president of The Right Approach Consulting. To read past columns or contact Williams, click here. memory devices. Instead of using individual domains, in the future, one could store the information in three-di- mensional spin structures, making memories faster and more robust, and providing a larger data capacity. The re- sults are published in Nature Materials. The research team was able to demonstrate a hither- to undiscovered interaction, which occurs between two thin magnetic layers separated by a non-magnetic layer. Usually, spins align either parallel or antiparallel to each other. This would also be expected for two such separate magnetic layers. However, in this work, the researchers have been able to show that the spins in the two layers are twisted against each other. More precisely, they cou- ple to align perpendicular at an angle of 90 degrees with one another. Reinoud Lavrijsen, assistant professor at Applied Physics, says, "This breakthrough discovery opens up the possibility of de- signing various new three-dimensional spin structures, which, in the long term, could lead to new magnetic storage units. The identified interaction, however, is at this mo- ment not strong enough for applications, but we are committed to engineer and op- timize this further so that it can be used in future three-dimensional data storage and logic devices." (Source: Eindhoven University of Technology) Nowadays, we ubiquitously stream videos, download audiobooks to mobile devices, and store huge numbers of photos on our devices. Thus, the storage capacity we need is growing rapidly, and researchers are working hard to develop new data storage options. One possibility is represented by the so-called "racetrack memory device" in which data is stored in nanowires in the form of oppo- sitely magnetized layers. A research team from Eindhoven University of Technolo- gy, Johannes Gutenberg University (JGU), Peter Grunberg Institute (PGI), Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology, and Sogang University has now made a dis- covery that could significantly improve these racetrack New Interaction Between Thin-film Magnets for Faster Memory Devices