Spintronics-Info: the spintronics experts

Scientists from Australia's Monash University (affiliated with Fleet, the Australian research council funded ‘Arc Centre of Excellence in Future low-energy Electronics Technologies’) have discovered how magnetism occurs in 2D ‘kagome’ metal-organic frameworks, opening the door to self-assembling controllable nano-scale electronic and spintronic devices.

Kagome materials have repeating patterns of hexagons and smaller triangles, with the hexagons touching at their tips. The word 'Kagome' comes from Japanese, relating to a basket weaving pattern.

Researchers at CIC nanoGUNE BRTA in Spain and University of Regensburg in Germany have recently demonstrated spin precession at room temperature in the absence of a magnetic field in bilayer graphene. In their paper, the team used 2D materials to realize a spin field-effect transistor.

Sketch of the spin field-effect transistor. Image from article

Coherently manipulating electron spins at room temperature using electrical current is a major goal in spintronics research. This is particularly valuable as it would enable the development of numerous devices, including spin field-effect transistors. In experiments using conventional materials, engineers and physicists have so far only observed coherent spin precession in the ballistic regime and at very low temperatures. Two-dimensional (2D materials), however, have unique characteristics that could provide new control knobs to manipulate spin procession.

Rice University researchers have confirmed the topological origins of magnons, magnetic features they discovered three years ago in a 2D material that could prove useful for encoding information in the spins of electrons.

The discovery provides a new understanding of topology-driven spin excitations in materials known as 2D van der Waals magnets. The materials are of growing interest for spintronics - for computation, storage and communications.

An international team of researchers has presented a finding that could help to identify exotic quantum states. The team seen strongly competing factors that affect an electron's behavior in a high-quality quantum material.

As an electron moves, its motion and spin can become linked through an effect known as spin–orbit coupling. This effect is useful because it offers a way to externally control the motion of an electron depending on its spin—a vital ability for spintronics. Spin–orbit coupling is a complex mix of quantum physics and relativity, but it becomes easier to understand by envisioning a round soccer ball. "If a soccer player kicks the ball, it flies on a straight trajectory," explains Denis Maryenko of the RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science. "But if the player gives the ball some rotation, or spin, its path bends." The ball's trajectory and its spinning motion are connected. If its spinning direction is reversed, the ball's path will bend in the opposite direction.

Researchers from Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology (DGIST) in Korea have demonstrated a novel route to tune and control the magnetic domain wall motions employing combinations of useful magnetic effects inside very thin film materials. The research offers a new insight into spintronics and a step towards new ultrafast, ultrasmall, and power-efficient IT devices.

The new study demonstrates a new way to handle information processing using the movement of the magnetic states of the thin film device. It takes advantage of some unusual effects that occur when materials with contrasting types of magnetic material are squashed together. The research focuses on a device that combines ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic materials, in which the directions of electron spins align differently within the respective magnetic materials.

Researchers at the University of Vienna have designed a 3D magnetic nanonetwork, where magnetic monopoles emerge due to rising magnetic frustration among the nanoelements, and are stable at room temperature.

The new three dimensional (3D) nano-network could mean a new era in modern solid state physics, with numerous applications in photonics, bio-medicine, and spintronics. The realization of 3D magnetic nano-architectures could enable ultra-fast and low-energy data storage devices.

Researchers from Berkeley Lab, UC Berkeley, UC Riverside, Argonne National Laboratory, Nanjing University and the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, have developed an ultrathin magnet that operates at room temperature. This development could lead to new applications in computing and electronics - such as high-density, compact spintronic memory devices - and new tools for the study of quantum physics.

"We're the first to make a room-temperature 2D magnet that is chemically stable under ambient conditions," said senior author Jie Yao, a faculty scientist in Berkeley Lab's Materials Sciences Division and associate professor of materials science and engineering at UC Berkeley. "This discovery is exciting because it not only makes 2D magnetism possible at room temperature, but it also uncovers a new mechanism to realize 2D magnetic materials," added Rui Chen, a UC Berkeley graduate student in the Yao Research Group and lead author on the study.