Overview
The group covers all aspects of fundamental physics related to spin electronics by employing a wide range of theoretical approaches including ab initio, tight-binding, free electron and diffusive methods, combined with micromagnetic simulation approaches based on solution of Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert (LLG) equation. This allows explaining experimental observations, providing solutions for specific problems and predicting novel properties and phenomena guiding the experimental work to optimize spintronic nanostructures.
Research directions
Electronic structure and magnetic properties of materials from first principles
Ab initio calculations based on DFT are performed in order to provide insights into fundamental mechanisms of various spintronic phenomena, and to propose novel materials and their efficient combinations with required electronic structure and magnetic properties for optimal performance of spintronic devices.
Spin-dependent transport theories
We employ tight-binding, free electron and diffusive approaches including Green function techniques in the framework of Keldysh and Kubo formalisms, in order to describe spin and charge transport properties in magnetic nanostructures with non-collinear magnetic moments in vertical, lateral and complex geometries.
Theoretical concepts for organic and graphene spintronics
The goal of this topic is to harvest theoretically novel spin-dependent properties (e.g. proximity effects and defect induced magnetism etc.) in organic, graphene and related 2D materials based structures in the context of emerging field of graphene spintronics.
Micromagnetic modeling
Magnetization dynamics (macrospin and micromagnetic) simulations under applied magnetic field and/or spin polarized currents are developed to address functionalities of spintronic devices (e.g. magnetization switching, synchronization and modulation for oscillators) in various geometries. Straightforward analytical models are developed to supplement fast and efficient understanding of the magnetization dynamics.
The team
Former members
Post-docs
- Ali HALLAL (2015-2019)
- Sergey NIKOLAEV (2015-2017)
- Debapriya CHAUDHURY (2016-2018)
- Cristian ORTIZ PAUYAC (2016-2017)
- Hongxin YANG (2013-2015)
PhD
- Daniel SOLIS LERMA (2016-2020)
- Paulo COELHO (with Magnetic Sensors Group, 2014-2017)
Internships
- Libor VOJACEK (2020)
- Brian CHARLES (with MRAM Group, 2016)
Projects
- ANR SpinSpike (2021-2024)
- ANR UFO (2021-2024)
- EU H2020 FET Project Flagship “Graphene” Core 3 (2020-2023)
- ANR MAGICVALLEY (2018-2021)
- ANR FEOrgSPIN (2018-2021)
- EU H2020 FET Project Flagship “Graphene” Core 2 (2018-2020)
- ANR JCJC MATEMAC-3D (2017-2020)
- EU H2020 ICT Project “SPICE” (2016-2020)
- EU H2020 ICT Project “GREAT” (2016-2019)
- ANR ELECSPIN (2016-2019)
- EU H2020 FET Project Flagship “Graphene” Core 1 (2016-2018)
- EU FET FP7 Project Flagship “Graphene” (2013-2016)
- EU M-ERA.NET HEUMEM supported via ANR-DFG (2014-2017)
- UGA Émergence et partenariat stratégique avec Western Digital (2015-2017)
- Samsung SGMI (2014-2017)
- ANR SOSPIN (2013-2016)
- ANR NMGEM (2010-2015)
- AGI14SMI15 AGIR (2014-2015)
Partners
- Transilvania University, Brasov, Romania
- IRIG/PHELIQS, Grenoble, France
- Institut Néel, Grenoble, France
- Unité Mixte Physique CNRS/Thalès, Palaiseau, France
- Laboratoire de Physique des Solides, Orsay, France
- Catalan Institute of Nanotechnology, Barcelona, Spain
- Institut Jean Lamour, Nancy, France
- Moscow Lomonosov State University, Moscow, Russia
- King Abdullah University of science and technology, Thuwal, Saudi Arabia
- University of Puerto Rico, San Juan, PR, USA
- Western Digital Corporation, CA, USA
- University of Bielefeld, Germany
- University of Kaiserslautern, Germany
- Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids, Dresden, Germany
- Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA
- ETH, Zurich, Switzerland
- NIMTE, Ningbo, China
Recent news
- Spin-orbitronics at a topological insulator-semiconductor interface (July 02nd, 2020)
Topological insulators (TI) represent a new class of insulating materials hosting metallic surface states. Moreover, those surface states exhibit a Dirac cone energy dispersion where the strong spin-orbit coupling leads to a helical spin texture ... - All-optical switching of magnetization in Tb/Co-multilayer based electrodes (April 30th, 2020)
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 ... - PhD Defense – Proximity-induced transport phenomena in graphene-based spintronic device (April 28th, 2020)
On Wednesday May 13, 2020 at 14h Daniel SOLIS LERMA from SPINTEC will defend his PhD thesis entitled : Proximity-induced transport phenomena in graphene-based spintronic devices Place : the defense (public) will take place by video-conference. Contact ... - Reducing the impact of operating temperature in magnetic memory thanks to perpendicular shape anisotropy (April 01st, 2020)
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 ... - Spin accumulation dynamics in spintronic devices in the terahertz regime (March 26th, 2020)
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 ...