Magnetic skyrmions are localized chiral spin textures, which offer great promise to store and process information at the nanoscale. The unique sense of rotation of their surrounding domain wall, called chirality, is resulting from the so-called Dzyaloshinskii−Moriya Interaction. C.E. Fillion et al. have managed the inversion of the skyrmion chirality by applying a gate voltage, […]

Skyrmions in synthetic antiferromagnets are appealing for use in future memory and computing devices, combining small size and fast motion, but creating, stabilizing, and observing them remains a challenge. Here, we demonstrate the stabilization and current and light induced nucleation of skyrmions in a synthetic antiferromagnet, observing the magnetization texture in each layer using X-ray […]

A new form of spintronic is emerging, exploiting electrical insulators. Recent spectroscopic studies performed at SPINTEC have revealed the coherent coupling that may establish between two distant macrospins separated by a non-magnetic dielectric spacer via circularly-polarized acoustic phonons that carry angular momentum information. This long-range effect represents an important progress in magnonics and spin wave […]

Perpendicular-shape-anisotropy magnetic random-access memory (PSA MRAM) has been proposed to maintain the thermal stability of solid-state magnetic bits down to a few nanometers in diameter. Here we confirm directly with high-spatial resolution and high-sensitivity electron holography that magnetization is weakly affected by temperature, in contrast with the conventional ultrathin MRAM cells. Magnetic random-access memory (MRAM) […]

A recent breakthrough in understanding the thermal effects on the magnetic properties of perpendicularly magnetized Fe/MgO interfaces is reported. It turns out that the macroscopic mechanisms play a decisive role in determining the thermal stability of magnetization in such structures. The perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA) at magnetic transition metal/oxide interfaces(TM/Ox) is a key element in […]

Van der Waals (vdW) layered magnets are promising materials to develop ultracompact and multifunctional spintronics devices. However, most of them are magnetic only at low temperature and are almost exclusively studied in the form of small flakes obtained by mechanical exfoliation. Here, we demonstrate the direct growth by molecular beam epitaxy of Fe5GeTe2, a room […]

Magnetic Random Access Memory recently started to be commercialized by all main microelectronics factories. In MRAM, the information is coded via parallel or antiparallel magnetic configurations to represent ones and zeroes. The technology is intrinsically nonvolatile, meaning it can keep information without being electrically powered. However, nonvolatility often comes with a trade-off between the information […]

We present a new type of biocompatible surface-functionalized magnetic microparticles for cancer cells destruction. The magnetite particles, covered with polyethylene glycol molecules, are shown to favor cell-death via apoptosis when set into vibrations by alternating magnetic field.   A team from SPINTEC, in collaboration with researchers from SyMMES, has recently developed a new type of […]

The broken inversion symmetry of some semiconductors may allow for spin–charge interconversion, but its control by electric fields is volatile. This has led to interest in ferroelectric Rashba semiconductors, which combine semiconductivity, large spin–orbit coupling and non-volatility. Here we report room-temperature, non-volatile ferroelectric control of spin-to-charge conversion in epitaxial germanium telluride films. Spintronics could potentially […]

Significant Dzyaloshinskii–Moriya interaction (DMI) and perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA) at interfaces comprising hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) and cobalt (Co) remaining stable over a large range of Co film thickness are reported. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that that such significant DMI and PMA give rise to the formation of skyrmions with small applied external fields. Interfacial […]