A team of scientists from the USA. and Germany have demonstrated that chirality in nanoscale magnets may play a crucial role in data transmission and manipulation in spintronic devices, where the spin rather than the charge of an electron is used to store data. While the spins in ferromagnetic materials are simply oriented along one common direction, some nanomagnets were found to exhibit chirality. The researchers used spin-sensitive scanning tunneling miscroscopy (STM) and first-principles electronic structure calculations to identify the magnetic order. By making the STM technique sensitive to the spin, it allowed for the observation of the magnetism of single atoms. This extension of STM is known as spin polarized STM or SP-STM, and was developed by Matthew Bode (pictured here). Using this enhanced technique, Bode was able to demonstrate that under a magnetic field the pattern shifted in a given direction, which identified the unique chirality. The premise for his work was inspired by the pioneering effort of Soviet physicist, Igor Dzyaloshinski.