Correlated Magnetics: Scalability

The magnetic properties of a conventional magnet largely depend on the size, shape and grade of the material and the magnetization process used to manufacture it. A conventional magnet always has two poles and will either repel or attract another magnet depending on the relative orientation of the two magnets. If not constrained, it will orient itself such that it will attract another magnet. When two such magnets attract each other and become attached, the amount of attractive force produced between them depends on their magnetic properties and the amount of contacting surface area. The alignment error between two such magnets can be quite substantial because they can attach to each other and remain stationary in many different relative alignments as long as the attractive force produced between the two magnets plus friction is at least equal to their magnetic torque. Two attached conventional magnets can typically be rotated relative to each other and, depending on their shape, will remain at a given rotational alignment. Generally, conventional magnets of a certain size, shape and grade that are magnetized using the same magnetization process will all behave in substantially the same way. Moreover, the designer of conventional magnets is typically limited to varying size, shape, grade, and/or magnetization to meet scalability requirements. 

The ability to vary parameters (e.g., size, shape, number, field strength, and polarity) of each of the magnetic sources (i.e., maxels) that make up a correlated magnetic structure provides the magnet designer far more flexibility in order to better meet scalability requirements. For example, by increasing maxel resolution (i.e., reducing the size of each maxel while increasing the number of maxels) and by increasing code resolution along with the maxel resolution, the designer can use code resolution to control the extent to which the shortest path effect occurs in order to tailor the near field density and the far field density characteristics. This ability to control these characteristics is evident in Figure 1, where near field density increases and far field density decreases as code resolution increases.

Figure 1. Stronger Yet Safer Behavior Increases with Code Resolution

Generally, most behavioral characteristics of correlated magnetic structures improve (or scale) with code resolution including precision alignment characteristics, main lobe-to-side lobe ratio, release torque requirements, near field concentration, etc. The scalability of correlated magnetic structures is also controllable using characteristics of the codes used to produce them. The greater the number of magnetic sources within a correlated magnetic structure, the greater the ability to design codes to meet scalability requirements. Additionally, code designs that vary magnetic source field strengths (or amplitudes) in addition to magnetic source polarities can be implemented to further scale such behavioral characteristics.  

The magnetic sources of correlated magnetic sources can be almost any size, including nanometer scale. In the case of non-superconducting materials, there is a smallest size limit of one domain. When a material is made superconductive, however, the magnetic field that is within it can be as complex as desired. There is no practical lower size limit until reaching atomic scale. Magnetic sources may also be created at atomic scale as electric and magnetic fields produced by molecular size structures may be tailored to have correlated properties, e.g., nanomaterials and macromolecules.