Dynamical control of Spintronic devices through solid-state gating

ended

The increasing dependence of everyday life on digital technologies raises challenges for materials science. Data is becoming one of the most precious assets of modern society, and its storage and processing require more and more electrical power. In order to keep this energy consumption under control, new technologies are emerging that shift the paradigms of computation. Among these, the field of spintronics holds potential to meeting the current requirements of dense, nonvolatile data storage and logic technology in which information can be written, manipulated and read as efficiently and as fast as possible. The main goal of the SpinDy project is to develop innovative and sustainable spintronic devices. The basic concept behind my proposed approach is to use solid-state gating to act on the device structure during operation and thus tune its functionality dynamically. This will allow to perform low-power reading and writing operations without compromising the stability of the device for long-term information retention. I will implement this working in two parallel directions. The first is by achieving voltage control of orbital currents in light transition metals, which in turn allows to tune the torque efficiency at the interface between the metal and a magnetic material. The second is by manipulating the magnetic properties of a rare-earth-free ferrimagnetic layer through electrical gating. Finally, I will combine aspects of both approaches to develop proof-of-principle dynamical spintronic devices that can act as memory or for logic operations with enhanced performances in terms of energy efficiency and stability thanks to their tunable nature. The main outcomes of the SpinDy project display aspects of great interest from both applied and fundamental points of view and thus will be highly relevant for the research community, including disciplines beyond spintronics, as well as have economical and societal impacts.