August 2017

The partners in the EU-funded SPIN-PORICS (Merging Nanoporous Materials with Energy-Efficient Spintronics) announced the first prototypes of nanoporous magnetic memories, based on copper and nickel alloys (CuNi).

The project team reported being able to achieve a 35% reduction of magnetic coercivity compared to current devices, which meets the energy consumption required to reorientate the magnetic domains which is necessary for data recording. This result is due to the nanoporous design which enables the whole film - not only the surface - to participate in the electromagnetic effect.

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory were able to theoretically calculate the mechanism by which the electronic band structure of graphene could be modified with metal atoms.

The researcher can now study the effect of added metal atoms intercalated between graphene and its silicon carbide substrate. Since these atoms are magnetic, they can also make graphene useful for spintronics applications.

RWTH Aachen University and Germany-based AMO launched a new joint research center with a focus on the science and applications of graphene and related 2D materials. The new center has five founding principal investigators, all members of the $1 billion Graphene Flagship project.

The new center will addressing the challenges of future technology including high-frequency electronics, flexible electronics, energy-efficient sensing, photonics as well as valleytronics and spintronics.

Researchers from the University of Groningen developed a device made by 2D sheets of graphene and Boron-Nitride that showed unprecedented spin transport efficiency at room temperature.

The research, funded by the European Union's $1 billion Graphene Flagship, uses the single-layer graphene as the core material. The researchers say that graphene is a great material for spin transport - but the spin in the graphene cannot be manipulated. To over come this In this device, the graphene is sandwiched between two layers of Boron Nitride and the whole structure rests on silicon.

Researchers from the University of Nottingham discovered a new method to control the structure of magnetic domain walls. Controlling and reading the chirality of the domain wall can be eventually used to create information and logic devices.

In a magnetic wire, magnetic domain walls are areas that separate regions where the magnetisation points in opposite directions. Under certain conditions it consists of a region in which the magnetisation rotates around a central vortex core, which points into or out of the wire. The rotation 'direction' (clockwise or anticlockwise) of the vortex wall is called the chirality.