This work reports the development of perpendicular magnetic tunnel junctions incorporating a stack of Tb/Co nanolayers whose magnetization can be all-optically controlled via helicity-independent single-shot switching. Toggling of the magnetization of the Tb/Co electrode was achieved using either 60 femtosecond-long or 5 picosecond-long laser pulses, with incident fluences down to 3.5 mJ/cm2. Ever since the […]

Electron spin—a fundamentally quantum property—is central to spintronics, a technology that revolutionized data storage, and that could play a major role in creating new computer processors. In order to generate and detect spin currents, spintronics traditionally uses ferromagnetic materials whose magnetization switching consume high amounts of energy. In the April 22, 2020 issue of Nature, […]

MRAM is a type of nonvolatile memory that stores the binary information through the magnetic configuration of its main building block: the Magnetic Tunnel Junction (MTJ). In the last decade, the use of perpendicular anisotropy existing at the tunnel barrier interface, allowed to improve MRAM manufacturability. However, the thermal sensitivity of the interfacial anisotropy is […]

Spin accumulation phenomena frequently occur in spintronic devices due to the difference of electrical resistivities of spin-up and spin-down electrons in magnetic materials. They are balanced by spin relaxation phenomena. These phenomena take place in a diffusive regime which involves numerous individual scattering events. Consequently, although the time scale of elastic electron scattering in metals […]

Relating magnetotransport properties to specific spin textures at surfaces or interfaces is an intense field of research nowadays. Here, we investigate the variation of the electrical resistance of Ge(111) under the application of an external magnetic field. We find a magnetoresistance term that is linear in current density j and magnetic field B, reaching 0.5 […]

The Hall effect can be extended by inducing a temperature gradient in lieu of electric field that is known as the Nernst effect. After the discovery of the spin Nernst effect, the collection would not be complete without mentioning the valley degree of freedom benchmarked by the observation of the valley Hall effect in transition […]

A possibility of controlling electronic and magnetic properties of graphene via proximity of multiferroic substrate is demonstrated. Coupling graphene to a multiferroic oxide (bismuth ferrite) give rise to novel class of spin-dependent transport phenomena based on multiferroic-induced proximity effects in graphene. Based on these findings, a concept of multi-resistive device in lateral geometry is proposed. […]

The generation of a spin current and its further conversion to a charge current have attracted considerable attention, facilitating advances in basic physics along with the emergence of closely related applications in the field of spintronics. In this study, we experimentally and theoretically demonstrated the self-induced inverse spin Hall effect for spin-charge conversion, triggered by […]

We found that Mn4N, a rare-earth free ferrimagnet made of abundant elements, is an exciting candidate for the development of sustainable spintronics devices. This material possess exciting properties, and in particular domain walls can be moved at record speeds by spin-polarized currents, in absence of any external magnetic field. This is explained by the large […]

Domain-wall motion in one-dimensional conduits is both a textbook case for magnetization dynamics and the understanding of spin torques, and of practical importance for the design of novel spintronic ICT devices. However, instabilities known as Walker breakdown limit the speed in most cases. We have shown experimentally and confirmed by simulation, that these instabilities are […]