Second year PGR David Newman reently chaired a session at UK Magnetics Society Student Conference where he chaired a session and presented a talk entitled ‘Electrical detection of a DC spin current through an epitaxial antiferromagnetic NiO layer’.
The event was virtually hosted by the UK Magnetics Society to provide a platform for PhD student conference talks that had been cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic and also included several talks from academics and industrialists about their experiences in magnetism.
David reports on his experience:
I was responsible for chairing the session on “Nanoscale Magnetics” which featured a broad range of topics from spintronics to materials modelling. Running the session gave me valuable experience in event organisation/management whilst also getting the opportunity to network with other PhD speakers from across the country.
The term “spin currents” refer to the flow of intrinsic spin angular momentum without an accompanying charge transfer (as in a traditional electrical current). In my talk (originally planned for Intermag2020), I showed how the inverse spin Hall effect can be used to transfer a spin current into an electrical current for convenient measurement and applied this to a complex multilayer stack with an antiferromagnetic NiO layer. This work is of particular relevance to magnetic data storage which has turned to spintronic concepts and antiferromagnets for denser magnetic data storage which is more energy-efficient and operates at higher speed.
The conference offers a platform to those students working in magnetics related subjects to talk about their research and work.