IMX Talks - From planar nanotechnology to additive manufacturing: nanomagnetism lifted to new dimensions

We are experiencing an unprecedented growth of artificial intelligence and machine learning applications. This challenges the sustainability of current information technologies. Alternative computational schemes with lower energy per operation needs are urgently required. They stimulate research on nanomaterials contenders to go beyond conventional electronics. In our group we focus on novel functionalities offered by spin waves (magnons) in magnetically ordered nanomaterials consisting of ferro-, ferri- and antiferromagnets. For example, we have discovered the reversal of bistable nanomagnets by coherent magnons, which is a major step towards wave-based in-memory computing. In addition, we have demonstrated the atomic layer deposition of low-damping ferromagnetic metals. This has enabled us to create three-dimensional (3D) ferromagnetic nanostructures which exhibit novel magnonic properties such as geometry-controlled nonreciprocity. This observation is key for the realization of magnon diodes with uni-directional magnon flow in 3D device architectures. Our results put in evidence the scalability of functional magnetic nanostructures in both 3D magnonics and spintronics applications.

Bio: Dirk Grundler is an Associate Professor at the Institute of Materials (IMX) and co-affiliated with the Institute of Electrical and Micro Engineering (IEM). He started his Laboratory of Nanoscale Magnetic Materials and Magnonics (LMGN) at EPFL in 2015. Before that he was at the Physics Department of the Technical University of Munich in Germany which he had joined as a tenured professor (Chairholder) in Experimental Physics in 2005. He received his venia legendi (Habilitation) in Experimental Physics at the University of Hamburg in Germany in 2001 where he had received his PhD in 1995 for a thesis work performed at the Philips Research Laboratories, Hamburg, Germany, from 1991 to 1994. His research interests and accomplishments have ranged from magnetic field sensors based on multilayered high-temperature superconductors, the extraordinary magnetoresistance effect in semiconductor/metal hybrid structures and correlation phenomena in low-dimensional electron systems via spintronics, nanomagnonics and skyrmionics to the materials science of three-dimensional ferromagnet/superconductor hybrid structures (3D super-spintronics) in which curved surfaces induce novel properties and functionalities. His team combines experimental techniques with numerical modelling. In 2009, he was the co-organiser of the first international conference "Magnonics: From Fundamentals to Applications" which transformed into an ongoing series of biennial conferences. He was a principal investigator in different Priority Programmes and Cooperative Research Centres funded by the German Research Foundation as well as the Nanosystems Initiative Munich (NIM I and II) in the Excellence Initiative of the German federal and state governments. In the Transregional Collaborative Research Center TRR80 in Germany he co-founded an integrated graduate school in 2010. At EPFL, he was the director of the doctoral program in Materials Science and Engineering (EDMX) from 2018 to 2024.