Nanoscale spin-wave circuits based on engineered reconfigurable spin-textures

Abstract

Magnonics is gaining momentum as an emerging technology for information processing. The wave character and Joule heating-free propagation of spin-waves hold promises for highly efficient computing platforms, based on integrated magnonic circuits. The realization of such nanoscale circuitry is crucial, although extremely challenging due to the difficulty of tailoring the nanoscopic magnetic properties with conventional approaches. Here we experimentally realize a nanoscale reconfigurable spin-wave circuitry by using patterned spin-textures. By space and time-resolved scanning transmission X-ray microscopy imaging, we directly visualize the channeling and steering of propagating spin-waves in arbitrarily shaped nanomagnonic waveguides, with no need for external magnetic fields or currents. Furthermore, we demonstrate a prototypic circuit based on two converging nanowaveguides, allowing for the tunable spatial superposition and interference of confined spin-waves modes. This work paves the way to the use of engineered spin-textures as building blocks of spin-wave based computing devices.

Emission and propagation of 1D and 2D spin waves with nanoscale wavelengths in anisotropic spin textures

“…While the spatial distribution of the domain wall in our experiment is solely a consequence of both dipolar sample confinement fields and magnetostrictive anisotropies, it was shown that further control of the domain wall position can be achieved e.g. by exchange bias patterning [34,39], ferroelectric coupling [21,22], or external magnetic fields [31].…”

Optically Inspired Nanomagnonics with Nonreciprocal Spin Waves in Synthetic Antiferromagnets

“…Recently, nanoscale spin textures in magnetic materials have gained attention for their potential as functional elements in spin‐wave devices. In particular, spin‐wave guiding, generation, and tunable transmission were observed at naturally occurring spin textures such as vortices and domain walls.…”

Stripe domains reorientation in ferromagnetic films with perpendicular magnetic anisotropy

“…Other technological concepts are based on the controlled propagation of spin waves in films and micro/nanostructures through various kinds of spin textures. Notable examples are magnonic waveguides and spin-wave filters exploiting domain walls or different types of nanoscale spin textures [68][69][70][71][72][73]. Moreover, recent studies showed that stripe domains can be used to control spin-wave propagation, by changing the relative orientation between the spin-wave wave vector and the domains axis [74,75], suggesting the possibility to exploit stripe domains to realize reconfigurable spin-wave devices.…”