US Patent 8138874 - Nanomagnetic flip-flop

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/8138874.html

Flip-flops and shift registers are basic electronic circuits used to store binary data in digital electronics. this patent teaches a way to use nanomagnetic structures to reproduce these circuits on the nanoscale. Claim 1 reads:

1. A structure, comprising:

a substrate;

a plurality of nanomagnets on the substrate, each of the plurality of nanomagnets comprising a first easy axis and a first hard axis, wherein the plurality of nanomagnets are arranged substantially linearly on the substrate along a line extending through one of the first easy axis of each of the plurality of nanomagnets and the first hard axis of each of the plurality of nanomagnets, and wherein the first easy axis and the first hard axis of each of the plurality of nanomagnets are substantially in a first plane; and

a register nanomagnet on the substrate adjacent to one of the plurality of nanomagnets and having a second easy axis and a second hard axis, wherein the second easy axis is parallel to the first easy axis and the second hard axis is in a second plane that is not coplanar with the first plane.