Phys.org September 13, 2024 An international team of researchers (USA – UC Berkeley, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, France, Canada, Germany, Austria) measured the light-driven response of a magnetic multilayer structure made of thin alternating layers of cobalt and platinum at the few-femtosecond timescale. They observed how light rearranges the magnetic moment during and after excitation. The results revealed a sub-5 fs spike of magnetization in the platinum layer, which followed the shape of the driving pulse. They interpreted the observations as light-driven spin injection across the metallic layers of the structure. The light-triggered spin current was strikingly short, largely outpacing […]
Tag Archives: Spin currents
Toward a more energy-efficient spintronics
EurekAlert April 22, 2020 In order to generate and detect spin currents, spintronics traditionally uses ferromagnetic materials whose magnetization switching consume high amounts of energy. Researchers in France have demonstrated an alternative strategy to achieve low-power spin detection in a non-magnetic system by harnessing the electric-field-induced ferroelectric-like state of strontium titanate to manipulate the spin–orbit properties of a two-dimensional electron gas and efficiently convert spin currents into positive or negative charge currents, depending on the polarization direction. The research opens the way to the electric-field control of spin currents and to ultralow-power spintronics…read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE