Ever wondered why mending a hole in your sock was so difficult? The answer is topology! You cannot continuously deform the tissue to close the hole without putting in a large amount of effort. This is called topological protection. A similar principle is at play when complex whirling and swirling polar or magnetic textures such as skyrmions are created in ferroic materials. They take a lot of energy to destroy, and are thus of large interest to design non-volatile memories. The Smart Ferroic Materials center explores how these complex ferroic textures are created, manipulated and destroyed to design materials for faster and more robust computing.
