Magnetic information-storage devices, such as floppy disks, credit card stripes, and hard-disk drives, have been getting smaller as the years go on. This size-reduction has been necessary as it allowed for more bits of data to be integrated into smaller devices. As technologists keep pushing the boundaries of just how much they can increase the storage density of these devices while keeping the devices themselves smaller and smaller, the limitations of this practice are being discovered.  Limitations and Opportunities Recently, device makers have found they are approaching the “miniaturization threshold” of 2D materials they typically employ. This isn’t the end though, researchers are instead planning to move from 2D to 3D, a change that will require new methods to observe and distinguish magnetization patterns. Luckily, Claire Donnelly at the University of Cambridge, UK, and her associates at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) and at the Paul Scherrer Institute are in the process of developing these methods.  “Moving to 3D offers a huge number of opportunities for advances,” Donnelly says of their research which has the possibility to probe deeper into magnetic material than ever before. The limitations were found by Donnelly’s team as they observed a complex magnetic pattern of vortices and antivortices as well as points where magnetization disappears — aka Bloch point singularities. In addition, a new texture was also discovered in the process— a magnetic vortex ring made up of a loop of pairs of vortices and antivortices that’s never been seen before.  This research technique called magnetic x-ray tomography has its own limitations, though. Thus, Donnelly and her team were motivated to develop a second procedure called magnetic laminography.  Magnetic Laminograhy— New Researching Technique Laminograhy is similar to its predecessor, tomography, but the rotational axis of the sample will not be perpendicular to the x-ray beam. This is important because now the sample can be angled so that all three spatial dimensions are able to be seen at the same time. With this new technique, Donnelly says that her team can now observe in 3D what’s going on when the material is stimulated by a magnetic field. The innovative imaging techniques founded by Donnelly and her team have the potential to discover even more integral information, including those that will help improve magnetic storage devices further.  More From Apex Things are always changing in the world of magnetism. To keep up with all things magnetic check out our blog full of magnet, facts, and experiments!