Opportunity for neutron scattering in spintronic thin film materials science
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Date
2016-08-01
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Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
Abstract
Basic science has revealed novel magnetic materials or magnetic effects which, in principle, show promise to be deployed in future magnetic electronics or storage devices. A particularly promising area is spintronic materials. However, many of the most promising materials only work under extreme conditions such as very low temperatures or large magnetic fields. The big challenge is to understand the physics of these often artificially structured and engineered materials at the atomic or nanometer level and to make them work at room-temperature.
In order to characterise new magnetic properties which are often caused by interface or finite size effects, neutron scattering techniques such as polarised neutron reflectometry (PNR), SANS and diffraction are very powerful tools. These techniques have the capability for characterising the magnetic structures of artificially layered films from the micron down to the sub-nanometre scale.
Despite still being a relatively “slow” magnetic measurement technique, neutron scattering experiments are often the key to explaining the underlying physics as they provide information that is only accessible using the unique combination of properties provided by the neutron particle.
This talk will review the current state-of-the-art and present striking examples which illustrate the usefulness of neutron quantum beams in magnetic thin film and spintronics research. The first example is a spin-polarised neutron reflectometry study on Co implanted TiO2 which demonstrates that giant magnetic moments up to 2.9μB per cobalt, not seen before in rutile or anatase, emerge from lightly Co doped regions of the amorphous TiO2 matrix [1]. The second example is a PNR study on ion beam irradiated FePt3 [2]. Here, the ion irradiation transforms AFM chemically ordered FePt3 into a chemically disordered state from which a distinct exchange bias effect emerges. © 2016 IEEE
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Keywords
Magnetism, Thin Films, Neutrons, Spin echo, Magnetic materials, Ferromagnetic materials, Neutron diffraction
Citation
Klose, F., Causer, G. L., & Cortie, D. L. (2016). Opportunity for neutron scattering in spintronic thin film materials science. Paper presented to the 2016 International Conference of Asian Union of Magnetics Societies (ICAUMS), Tainan, Taiwan, 1-5 August 2016. In 2016 International Conference of Asian Union of Magnetics Societies (ICAUMS): 1-5 Aug. 2016. Piscataway, New Jersey: IEEE. doi:10.1109/ICAUMS.2016.8479902