Spin Transport and Magnetization switching in realistic devices
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Bristol
Department Name: Physics
Abstract
This project is focused on material and device design for magnetic storage applications of spin currents in non-magnetic materials. We will extend existing methodologies to incorporate more realistic device designs including multilayers, interfaces, and surfaces to describe the actual switching mechanism in magnetic storage devices. The density functional implementation is relying on a relativistic Green's function method which is a powerful tool for transport calculations in complex materials.
All calculations will be guided by experimental methods used by collaborators in Tokyo, Osaka, Bristol and San Sebastian and by the needs for the actual industrial application. More fundamentally the focus will be to describe the various mechanisms on equal footing, including the Berry curvature driven intrinsic mechanism. This is a major challenge which has not yet been delivered by the community. To achieve this aspect formal derivations on a more abstract mathematical level have to be delivered and translated into computer code.
Initially, we will calculate spin dependent transport properties induced via impurity scattering. We will start to calculate the spin accumulation at interfaces something only done by one group so far. In the next step we will perform first principle calculations identifying ideal material combinations. The focus will be on high spin-orbit coupling materials which ideally are abundantly available and cheap in order to support the applications in industry
All calculations will be guided by experimental methods used by collaborators in Tokyo, Osaka, Bristol and San Sebastian and by the needs for the actual industrial application. More fundamentally the focus will be to describe the various mechanisms on equal footing, including the Berry curvature driven intrinsic mechanism. This is a major challenge which has not yet been delivered by the community. To achieve this aspect formal derivations on a more abstract mathematical level have to be delivered and translated into computer code.
Initially, we will calculate spin dependent transport properties induced via impurity scattering. We will start to calculate the spin accumulation at interfaces something only done by one group so far. In the next step we will perform first principle calculations identifying ideal material combinations. The focus will be on high spin-orbit coupling materials which ideally are abundantly available and cheap in order to support the applications in industry
Organisations
People |
ORCID iD |
| Martin Gradhand (Primary Supervisor) | |
| Ming-Hung Wu (Student) |
Studentship Projects
| Project Reference | Relationship | Related To | Start | End | Student Name |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| EP/N509619/1 | 01/10/2016 | 30/09/2021 | |||
| 1961420 | Studentship | EP/N509619/1 | 01/10/2017 | 31/03/2021 | Ming-Hung Wu |
| Description | Uranium is a naturally occurring heavy metal and has been widely utilised in human life for electricity. Uranium has been predicted having a strong property called spin-orbit coupling (SOC). The SOC is intimately connected to spin Hall effect further related to the technological applications such as magnetic random access memory, which can improve the speed of computation in our life. So far the research about spin Hall effect of uranium is sparse. The journal article we published computationally provide insight into the uranium's possibility. Our results show that uranium has large spin Hall effect in a certain crystal structure and how the spin Hall effect is affected by impurities doped in the uranium. These results provide a potential candidate for the application of spin Hall effect. |
| Exploitation Route | So far the spin Hall effect has been widely investigated for Pt, Co, Fe, etc. These materials are not as heavy as uranium and uranium has a very different electronic structure mainly constructed with 5f-electrons. The research of spin Hall effect in uranium, 5f-orbital metal, is sparse. Our results provides the study the influence of 5f-orbital and spin-orbit coupling to the spin Hall effect. These results can be consider in a comparison with other materials and deeply look into the mechanism of spin Hall effect. Moreover, the uranium has also been studied in multilayer systems and in magnetism, which is related to the spin dynamics. The spin Hall effect we investigated, spin dependent mechanism, can be considered in other studies about uranium. |
| Sectors | Electronics |