Imaging and manipulating the spin direction of individual atoms

Serrate, David; Ferriani, P.; Yoshida, Yasuo; Hla, Saw‐Wai; Menzel, Matthias; Bergmann, Kirsten; Heinze, Stefan; Kubetzka, André; Wiesendanger, R.

doi:10.1038/nnano.2010.64

Cited by 140 publications

(173 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…During the past years, it has been demonstrated that the scanning tunnelling microscope (STM) is a powerful tool for building and controlling individual nanomagnetic structures, and has a great potential for use in the construction of future nanoscale magnetic devices. Previous studies of engineering individual magnetic atoms on surfaces [2] include exchange coupling between magnetic atoms [3][4][5][6], anisotropic spin environments of a single atom or dimer [7][8][9], and observations of Kondo effects [10,11]. Very recently, atom manipulation using the STM has been able to demonstrate important technological progress such as logic operations entirely based on engineered atomic spins [12] and dense nonvolatile storage of information by an atomicscale antiferromagnet [13].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Magnetic Interaction between Surface-Engineered Rare-Earth Atomic Spins

Lin

Hsieh

et al. 2012

Phys. Rev. X

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We report the ab-initio study of rare-earth adatoms (Gd) on an insulating surface. This surface is of interest because of previous studies by scanning tunneling microscopy showing spin excitations of transition-metal adatoms. The present work is the first study of rare-earth spin-coupled adatoms, as well as the geometry effect of spin coupling and the underlying mechanism of ferromagnetic coupling. The exchange coupling between Gd atoms on the surface is calculated to be antiferromagnetic in a linear geometry and ferromagnetic in a diagonal geometry. We also find that the Gd dimers in these two geometries are similar to the nearest-neighbor and the next-nearest-neighbor Gd atoms in GdN bulk. We analyze how much direct exchange, superexchange, and Ruderman-Kittel-Kasuya-Yosida interactions contribute to the exchange coupling for both geometries by additional first-principles calculations of related model systems.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Magnetic Interaction between Surface-Engineered Rare-Earth Atomic Spins

Lin

Hsieh

et al. 2012

Phys. Rev. X

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“…[9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16] While covering both categories, our goal here is to present an overview of advancements in computing with spins and magnets from the macroscopic scale to the atomic scale. [16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25] …”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Computing with spins and magnets

2014

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Abstract:The possible use of spin and magnets in place of charge and capacitors to store and process information is well known. Magnetic tunnel junctions are being widely investigated and developed for magnetic random access memories. These are two terminal devices that change their resistance based on switchable magnetization of magnetic materials. They utilize the interaction between electron spin and magnets to read information from the magnets and write onto them. Such advances in memory devices could also translate into a new class of logic devices that offer the advantage of nonvolatile and reconfigurable information processing over transistors. Logic devices having a transistor-like gain and directionality could be used to build integrated circuits without the need for transistor-based amplifiers and clocks at every stage. We review device characteristics and basic logic gates that compute with spins and magnets from the mesoscopic to the atomic scale, as well as materials, integration, and fabrication challenges and methods.

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“…This can be achieved by reducing the size of the information storage units going down to the nanoscale or even to single atoms [39]. Detecting and manipulating spins [40] with high accuracy on the atomic scale is essential for future technological applications.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Three-dimensional Wentzel-Kramers-Brillouin approach for the simulation of scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy

2013

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We review the recently developed three-dimensional (3D) atom-superposition approach for simulating scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) and spectroscopy (STS) based on ab initio electronic structure data. In the method, contributions from individual electron tunneling transitions between the tip apex atom and each of the sample surface atoms are summed up assuming the one-dimensional (1D) Wentzel-Kramers-Brillouin (WKB) approximation in all these transitions. This 3D WKB tunneling model is extremely suitable to simulate spin-polarized STM and STS on surfaces exhibiting a complex noncollinear magnetic structure, i.e., without a global spin quantization axis, at very low computational cost. The tip electronic structure from first principles can also be incorporated into the model, that is often assumed to be constant in energy in the vast majority of the related literature, which could lead to a misinterpretation of experimental findings. Using this approach, we highlight some of the electron tunneling features on a prototype frustrated hexagonal antiferromagnetic Cr monolayer on Ag(111) surface. We obtain useful theoretical insights into the simulated quantities that is expected to help the correct evaluation of experimental results. By extending the method to incorporate a simple orbital dependent electron tunneling transmission, we reinvestigate the bias voltage-and tip-dependent contrast inversion effect on the W(110) surface. STM images calculated using this orbital dependent model agree reasonably well with Tersoff-Hamann and Bardeen results. The computational efficiency of the model is remarkable as the k-point samplings of the surface and tip Brillouin zones do not affect the computational time, in contrast to the Bardeen method. In a certain case we obtain a relative computational time gain of 8500 compared to the Bardeen calculation, without the loss of quality. We discuss the advantages and limitations of the 3D WKB method, and show further ways to improve and extend it.

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Imaging and manipulating the spin direction of individual atoms

Cited by 140 publications

References 18 publications

Magnetic Interaction between Surface-Engineered Rare-Earth Atomic Spins

Magnetic Interaction between Surface-Engineered Rare-Earth Atomic Spins

Computing with spins and magnets

Three-dimensional Wentzel-Kramers-Brillouin approach for the simulation of scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy

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