Research / Technical - Page 16

Researchers from Seoul National University, Pohang University of Science and Technology, Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute and the Center for Quantum Materials in Korea have designed a prototype of a non-volatile magnetic memory device entirely based on a nanometer-thin layered material, which can be tuned with a tiny current. This finding opens up a new window of opportunities for future energy-efficient magnetic memories based on spintronics.

The choice of magnetic material and device architecture depends on the fact that non-volatile memory technologies have to guarantee safe storage, but also reliable reading and writing access. Hard magnets are perfect for long-term memory storage, because they magnetize very strongly and are difficult to demagnetize. On the contrary, soft magnets are desirable for adding new information to the memory device, because their magnetization can be easily reversed during the writing process. Put simply, ideal magnetic materials can be kept at a hard magnetic state to ensure the stability of the stored information, but be soft on demand.

Researchers from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) demonstrated spin detection using a spin filter to separate spin orientation according to their energies.

In this new study, UNSW researchers have exploited the non-linear interactions between spin accumulation and charge currents in gallium-arsenide holes, demonstrating all-electrical spin-to-charge conversion without the need for a magnetic field. This is an important achievement for spintronics devices, as detection of spin-to-charge conversion has always required a large range of magnetic fields, thus limiting the speed and practicality.

Researchers from the Tokyo University of Science have developed an all-solid redox device composed of magnetite (Fe₃O₄) thin film and a solid electrolyte containing lithium ions that successfully manipulated the magnetization angle at room temperature.

The researchers say they have developed a surprisingly simple yet efficient strategy to manipulate the magnetization angle in magnetite, a typical ferromagnetic material. This magnetization rotation is caused by the change of spin-orbit coupling due to electron injection into a ferromagnet. The new approach leverages a reversible electrochemical reaction.

Researchers from the University of New South wales (UNSW) discovered that removing random doping in quantum electronic devices dramatically improves their reproducibility. This could be highly useful in creating future quantum spintronics devices.

In their paper, the researchers show that the reproducibility problem in quantum devices comes from the random spatial position of dopants in quantum devices. This is why removing the dopants has such a big effect.

An international group of researchers, led by the CNRS, developed a new technique that can switch magnetization in only six picoseconds, which is almost 100-times faster than current state-of-the-art spintronics. The new technique is also highly efficient.

The experimental design used to create the ultra-fast magnetization switching included an optical pump directed at the photoconductive switch, which converts the light into 6-picosecond electric pulses. The structure guides these pulses toward the magnet. When the pulses reach the magnet, they trigger the magnetization switching.

The European Research Council (ERC) granted a €1.9 million new project to Prof. Can Onur Avci, in the field of magnetic insulators for spintronics devices. Prof. Aci will move to ICMAB and be integrated at the ICMAB Research Line 3 (RL3) “Oxides for new generation electronics”. The activities of this research center span from multiferroics, flexoelectric materials oxide photonics and spintronics to ferroelectric memory arrays and GHz-THz magnetoelectrics.

The awarded project is called MAGNEPIC, or “Magnetic Insulators: An Enabling Platform for Innovative Spintronic Concepts”. The project full goal is to study magnetic insulators to develop novel device concepts and explore emerging physical phenomena that could be useful for future spintronics research and applications.

Researchers from Exeter University, in collaboration with the Universities of Oxford, California Berkeley, and the Advanced and Diamond Light Source have experimentally demonstrated that high frequency alternating spin currents can be transmitted by, and sometimes amplified within, thin layers of antiferromagnetic NiO.

The researchers say that these results demonstrate that the spin current in thin NiO layers is mediated by evanescent spin waves, a mechanism akin to quantum mechanical tunnelling. This could lead to more efficient future wireless communication technology based on such antiferromagnetic spintronics devices.

Researchers from NYU and IBM Research have created a spintronics device from a ferromagnetic conductor and discovered that current flow in the conductor can produce a spin polarization that is in a direction set by its magnetic moment.

This discovery means that magnetic moment direction can be set in just about any desired direction to then set the spin polarization - this is not possible using the contours of the spin Hall effect in non-magnetic heavy metals.

Researchers from Delft University of Technology developed a magnetic wave sensor that is only 11 atoms in size. The sensor includes an antenna, a readout capability, a reset button and a memory unit.

The researchers say that this tiny sensor will be used to learn more about the behavior of magnetic waves, and could one day be the basis of spintronics devices.

Researchers from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) have developed a new method to apply graphene as an active spintronic component for generating, controlling, and detecting spin current without ferromagnetic electrodes or magnetic fields.

The KAIST researchers observed highly efficient charge-to-spin interconversion via the gate-tunable Rashba-Edelstien effect (REE) in graphene heterostructures. The researchers used graphene stacked on top of a large spin-orbit coupling transition metal dichalcogenide material (2H-TaS₂).