December 2017

As 2017 is coming to an end, it is nice to take a look at the year that passed with its interesting spintronics related research activities and advances.

Here are the top 10 stories posted on Spintronics-Info in 2017, ranked by popularity (i.e. how many people read the story):

1. Researcher discover a 2D material that possessed an intrinsic ferromagnetism. (Apr 30)
2. Researchers develop world's fastest magnetic tunnel junction that is switched by light pulses (Mar 12)
3. IGSresearch discusses antiferromagnetic spintronics applications (Mar 3)
4. Professor Stuart Parkin from the max Planck Institute explains his spintronics research (Feb 9)
5. Electron spin can be used to reduce contact resistance in graphene electronics (May 22)
6. Researchers develop graphene-based room-temperature spin field-effect transistor (Jul 9)
7. Spin-LED enable almost purely circularly polarized emission (Feb 10)
8. Researchers develop a spin-resolved oscilloscope (Mar 14)
9. A device made from 2D graphene and Boron Nitride shows unprecedented spin transport efficiency (Aug 16)
10. Bismuthene is a newly developed graphene-like 2D topological insulator (Jul 20)

Researchers from NUS have demonstrated for the first time room temperature magnetization switching driven by giant spin-orbit torques (SOT) in topological insulator/conventional ferromagnetic heterostructures with an extremely low current density.

The researchers believe that such switching that uses so little power could be used to scale up spintronics devices. The researchers achieved the switching using an 8-nm layer of Bi₂Se₃ grown on top of a 6 nm layer of NiFe, a widely used ferromagnet.