Spin-waves, or their quantized counterparts (magnons) are propagating waves formed by the collective spin excitations in a magnetic body. In standard magnetic thin films and devices, the relevant spin-waves have typically frequencies in the 1-50 GHz range and wavelengths from 10 nm to 10 µm. As spin-waves determine to a large extent the rate at which one can manipulate the magnetization, they are of central importance in various applications of spin electronics, e.g. solid state magnetic memories, microwave magnetic oscillators and magnetization-based rf devices.
In this seminar, I start with an introduction to spin-wave dynamics, spin-wave spectroscopy, and the potential applications thereof. While the generation, detection, propagation and phase manipulation of spin-waves in spintronics devices is now well understood, the implementation of magnon-based computing or spin-wave based manipulation of information requires now to design energy-efficient spin wave transceivers. I review our effort on inductive transceivers, and detail how we have harnessed them to fabricate a micrometer-scale spin wave majority gate with frequency multiplexing capability.
Acknowledgment: most of the work was done in collaboration with IMEC Belgium and with IPCMS, Strasbourg.
C2N, Centre de Nanosciences et de Nanotechnologies, CNRS, Université Paris-Saclay, Palaiseau, France