Last month, 2nd year PGRs David Newman and Kostas Chatzimpaloglou both gave contributed talks for the Institute of Physics Current Research in Magnetism 2020: High Frequency Spintronics, which was held virtually.
David’s presentation was on “Spin current propagation through an epitaxial antiferromagnetic NiO layer”. In this talk, he demonstrated the use of the inverse spin Hall effect (ISHE) and X-ray Ferromagnetic Resonance (XFMR) measurements to observe a DC and AC spin current respectively propagating through an antiferromagnetic layer in a multilayer sample. This is intended to inform future studies on spin current propagation which is a vital step in the development of spintronic devices.
David says of his talk:
I found it a great experience to present my work as part of a programme filled with the big names in the research field and make more contacts within the community.
Kostas’ talk was titled “Time resolved magneto-optical study of spin-orbit torques (SOTs) in ellipsoidal CoFeB/Pt
elements” and focused on results gathered from the development of a magneto-optical Spin Transfer Torque Ferromagnetic Resonance (STT-FMR) technique to explore the magnetization dynamics that arise in these devices in response to DC current excitation.
By comparing with a macrospin model simulation with experimental data, this proves that when DC current is large enough, the DC SOT is observed to act on the magnetization. However, the strong DC Oersted field produces similar features in the resonance to the effect of SOT. Thus, it is required careful fitting to determine the value of SOT.