Magnetic materials for mastering microwaves on the nanoscale

Dirk Grundler, Laboratory of nanoscale magnetic materials and magnonics (LMGN), IMX, STI, EPFL
Modern information technology and mobile communication exploit microwave signals ranging from MHz to GHz. The internet of things will further enhance the needs for smart microwave electronics. In recent years magnetic materials and collective spin excitations (magnons) have experienced increasing interest in this context, and the research field magnonics was formed [1]. If coupled to electromagnetic waves, magnons promise to shrink wavelengths of relevant microwave signals by several orders of magnitudes. They allow one to create on-chip microwave devices exploiting the spin of electrons as information carrier –instead of charge– avoiding Joule heating [1,2]. The miniaturized devices can combine signal transmission and processing including logic operations. In the talk we will discuss recent developments and how nanoengineered magnetic materials as well as self-organized spin structures such as skyrmions advance both magnonics and the mastering of microwaves [3].     
[1] A.V. Chumak, V.I. Vasyuchka, A.A. Serga, B. Hillebrands, Magnon spintronics, Nat. Phys. 11, 453 (2015).
[2] H. Yu et al., Approaching soft X-ray wavelengths in nanomagnet-based microwave technology, Nat. Commun. 7, 11255 (2016).
[3] M. Garst, J. Waizner, D. Grundler, Collective spin excitations of helices and magnetic skyrmions: review and perspectives of magnonics in non-centrosymmetric magnets, J. Phys. D: Appl. Phys. 50 293002 (2017).
Bio: Dirk Grundler is an associate professor at the Institute of Materials since 2015. Current research interests focus on magnetic nanostructures and materials to be exploited in spintronics, magnonics and spin caloritronics. He studied physics at the University of Hamburg, Germany, and entered the Philips Research Laboratories, Hamburg, Germany, in 1990 for his Diploma and PhD theses working on superconducting sensors for biomagnetism and medical applications. In 1995 Dirk Grundler joined the Microstructure Research Center at the Institute for Applied Physics of University of Hamburg as a postdoctoral researcher investigating magnetic properties of low-dimensional electron systems and semiconductor spintronics. He received the habilitation in experimental physics at University of Hamburg in 2001. From 2005 to 2015 he was professor at the Technische Universitaet Muenchen, Germany, holding the chair of “Physics of functional multilayers”. Websites: lmgn.pfl.ch, skyrmions.epfl.ch