December 2015

2015 is pretty much over - and this has been another interesting year for the Spintronics research community. Here are the top 10 stories posted on Spintronics-Info in 2015, ranked by popularity (i.e. how many people read the story):

1. Researchers show SiC is a promising spintronics material (Jan 25)
2. Researchers created a zero-moment spin-polarized half metal for the first time (Mar 25)
3. Korean researchers managed to create a flexible film suitable for spintronics applications (Feb 12)
4. A new method introduces magnetism to graphene while preserving its electronics properties (Jan 27)
5. Spin-based memory cells can be trained to learn like a brain synapse (Apr 25)
6. Spin current shown to travel over half a micrometer in a thin doped germanium film (May 15)
7. Singapore allocates $3.7 million to support Spintronics research projects (Apr 23)
8. Researchers develop new promising low-symmetry crystal for spintronics applications (Feb 22)
9. Researchers discover that pure-spin current is possible in insulators (Jul 27)
10. EU's Graphene Flagship is looking for a partner company for spintronics research (Jan 28)

Researchers from France's Joseph Fourier University discovered that coating a cobalt film in graphene could double the film's perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA), so that it reaches a value 20 times higher than that of traditional metallic cobalt/platinum multilayers.

High-PMA materials are being researched for their applications in next-generation spintronic devices.

Researchers from Japan and France managed to detect magnetic fluctuations with pure spin current. This has been done in a much more sensitive way than conventional magnetization measurements.

The researchers used spin glass, a typical frustrated system where a small amount of impurities with magnetic moments is randomly distributed in a nonmagnetic host metal. At high temperatures, the magnetic moments are fluctuating with a very high speed. As the temperature approaches the spin glass temperature (Tg), the fluctuations become slower and then the magnetic moments are frozen at Tg.