“Controllable Antiferromagnetic Spintronics”
Thursday, Oct. 31 at 1:00pm
MALA 5050
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Abstract
Antiferromagnets represent a new opportunity for developing spintronic devices with fast speed and high device density. With zero net magnetic moment, they are immune to almost any external magnetic field disturbance. Meanwhile, the intrinsic dynamics at the Terahertz frequency makes them good candidates for high speed electronics. While a lot of useful ways have been developed for manipulating spins in ferromagnets over the past decades, our knowledge on detecting and controlling antiferromagnetic ordering remains at a very early stage.
Recently, by developing antiferromagnetic thin films with collinear or non-collinear spin sublattices, we realized a configuration where the spins from applied electrical currents can be efficiently injected into an antiferromagnet and realize efficient switching of spin ordering. Aside from electrically induced magnetic switching, our studies also show that a large readout signal from the tunneling magnetoresistance (>100%) can be achieved from magnetic tunnel junctions made from non-collinear antiferromagnets, suggesting that the antiferromagnet can exhibit high spin polarization as a regular ferromagnet despite of its nearly vanishing magnetization [3]. These studies introduce new material and device platforms for utilizing antiferromagnets for magnetic memory and spin logic.
Biography
Dr. Luqiao Liu is an associate professor of electrical engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He received his B.S. in physics from Peking University in 2006, and Ph.D. in applied physics from Cornell University in 2012. He worked as a research staff Member at IBM Watson Research Center before joining MIT in 2015. Dr. Liu’s current research focuses on spintronic material and devices for memory and logic applications. He has received McMillan Award, NSF Career Award, Air Force Young Investigator Award, Sloan Fellowship, and International Union of Pure and Applied Physics Young Scientist Award.