Morgan Williamson, UT-Austin

"Electrical Bias Driven Effects for Spintronic Applications: Ferromagnetic and Antiferromagnetic Materials"

Abstract: The ever-present demand for computing technology advancement has compelled progress toward the refinement of conventional CMOS routes, but has also driven new, less orthodox schemes whose advantages lie in branching out to access more of a system’s degrees of freedom. Spintronics, one such alternative scheme now adopted by Intel and Samsung (among others), is being proven out for memory applications in mass production. Spintronics is a field of study that exploits electron spin as well as charge for encoding binary information. Although still using nanomagnets to store data, spintronics transcends previous hard disk drive technology by pursuing nonvolatile solid-state magnetic memory. In this talk, we discuss voltage controlled magnetic anisotropy, an effect that can improve ferromagnetic spintronic device performance and also report on the transition metal oxide Sr3Ir2O7 for use in antiferromagnetic spintronics.