SPINTRONICS
Magnetic memories based on effects such as spin-orbit toque appear to offer significant advantages relative to semiconductor memory, including better areal scaling (owing to the absence of leakage currents) and non-volatility combined with high speed. Our efforts focus on theoretically predicting the strength of crucial phenomena such as the Spin Hall Effect, and designing devices that exploit the potential of spintronics.
MAGNETIC DAMPING
Magnetic damping, representing the loss of magnetic energy, can be both helpful in, for example, some microwave devices such as frequency selective limiters, and harmful in, for example, spintronic memories based on spin-transfer torque. Using electronic structure calculation and micromagnetics, we calculate damping in a variety of materials, with an emphasis on non-linear effects that can be exploited.
MAGNETIC HARD DISK DRIVES
Hard Disk Drives continue to be the dominant form of random access information storage, particularly in the cloud. Our research is primarily focused on allowing the areal density to continue its long increase, particularly using Heat Assisted Magnetic Recording (HAMR), where a magnetic field is combined with an optical spot focused by a near field transducer to a few 10’s of nm.