Thin film quantum materials

Abstract:

Stacking nonvolatile memory cells into a three-dimensional matrix represents a powerful solution for the future of magnetic memory. However, it is technologically challenging to access the data in the storage medium if large numbers of bits are stacked on top of each other. Here we introduce a new type of multilevel, nonvolatile magnetic memory concept, the magnetic abacus. Instead of storing information in individual magnetic layers, thereby having to read out each magnetic layer separately, the magnetic abacus adopts a new encoding scheme. It is inspired by the idea of second quantisation, dealing with the memory state of the entire stack simultaneously. Direct read operations are implemented by measuring the artificially engineered ‘quantised’ Hall voltage, each representing a count of the spin-up and spin-down layers in the stack. This new memory system further allows for both flexible scaling of the system and fast communication among cells. The magnetic abacus provides a promising approach for future nonvolatile 3D magnetic random access memory.

Abstract:

The nucleation of reversed magnetic domains in Pt/Co/AlO(x) microstructures with perpendicular anisotropy was studied experimentally in the presence of an in-plane magnetic field. For large enough in-plane field, nucleation was observed preferentially at an edge of the sample normal to this field. The position at which nucleation takes place was observed to depend in a chiral way on the initial magnetization and applied field directions. A quantitative explanation of these results is proposed, based on the existence of a sizable Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction in this sample. Another consequence of this interaction is that the energy of domain walls can become negative for in-plane fields smaller than the effective anisotropy field.