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Morphology and Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction at thin film interfaces (Dr Thomas Moore with Prof Wen-Xin Tang @ U.Chongqing)

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The interfacial Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction generates a chiral twist in magnetic moments at the interface of a ferromagnet such as Co and a heavy element such as Pt with large spin-orbit coupling.  This leads to magnetic domain walls of uniform chirality, and topologically stable magnetic domains known as skyrmions.  Such chiral magnetic objects have potential applications...

Dynamics of complex magnets – non-colinear and frustrated antiferromagnets (Dr J Barker)

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Historically, antiferromagnets have been difficult to study and utilise as they do not couple strongly to external fields. Recent scientific advances have found new ways to directly control them, giving rise to the new field of antiferromagnetic spintronics. It is showing promise for next generation technologies to compliment or replace electronics. Even at this early...

Vibronic control in nanoscale molecular devices (Dr. O. Cespedes)

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The size and speed of electronic devices have been exponentially increased in the last few decades thanks to the advances in fundamental science and fabrication processes. Nonetheless, these evermore smaller and faster designs are pushing the fundamental boundaries of quantum mechanics, which will soon result in excessive heating, defective elements and/or impaired processing. Furthermore, there...

Molecular magnetic tunnel junctions (Dr. O. Cespedes)

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Molecular electronics is an exciting field that has opened new paths for the technological applications of organic compounds. Compared to the commonly used semiconductor materials, molecular structures offer the advantages of recyclability, small intrinsic size and a wide range of transport regimes that can be matched with the contact electrodes to outperform current devices. In...

Electronic transport in 1-dimensional systems(Dr. O. Cespedes)

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The size or current electronic devices has been decreasing steadily for several decades, and soon will reach nm or sub-nanometer levels. For this objective, conceptually new methods of fabrication will be required. Furthermore, the electronic and structural properties of these structures will be very different from the bulk properties of the materials they are made...

Chiral spin structures in antiferromagnet-ferromagnet bilayers (Dr Thomas Moore with Prof Mathias Klaui @ U.Mainz)

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Chiral twists in atomic magnetic structure are seen in ferromagnets at the interface with heavy metals such as Pt and Au, leading to topologically stable magnetic domains known as skyrmions.  Such chiral magnetic objects have potential applications in magnetic memory and sensor technology.  Mn-based antiferromagnets also contain heavy elements (e.g. Pt, Ir), and this project...

Spin Polarised Non-equilibrium Superconductivity (Dr G Burnell and Prof BJ Hickey)

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Superconducting systems offer one of the few ways of studying quantum coherence on a macroscopuc scale and have therefore been a rich playground for experimental condensed matter physics. Despite the fact that BCS theory is highly succesful at describing low temperature superconductivity, the properties of superconducting systems driven out of equilibrium are less well understood....

Interaction of surface acoustic waves and thin magnetic films (Dr Thomas Moore with Prof John Cunningham)

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Magnetic data manipulation using electrical current is inefficient, and fundamentally there is scope for improvement by a factor 1000.  A promising route to low-power magnetic devices is to apply a voltage to a piezoelectric material that exerts strain on an adjacent magnetic thin film and manipulates its properties via magnetoelasticity.  As a proof-of-principle, we have...

Magnetic Skyrmions in Chiral Multilayers (Prof. Christopher Marrows)

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In this project we will study magnetic skyrmions, nanoscale swirls of spins that possess a special topology. They appear in properly designed magnetic multilayers at room temperature and are candidates for next-generation data storage technology. It is now over a decade since the carbon footprint of the internet grew larger than that of commercial air...

*** Fully Funded*** Pure Spin Currents and Heat (Prof B J Hickey and Dr G Burnell)

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Heat is the bane of modern electronics reaching limits where it future development is threatened.  Much of the energy that it takes to run computers and other digital devices is wasted as heat and an important part of the sustainability effort is directed towards reducing the consumption of energy.  Spintronics offers one possible route to...