Ferromagnetism is a property of certain materials that results in a significant, observable magnetic permeability, and in many cases, a significant magnetic coercivity, allowing the material to form a permanent magnet. Ferromagnetic materials are noticeably attracted to a magnet, which is a consequence of their substantial magnetic permeability.
Magnetoresistance is the tendency of a material to change the value of its electrical resistance in an externally-applied magnetic field. There are a variety of effects that can be called magnetoresistance. Some occur in bulk non-magnetic metals and semiconductors, such as geometrical magnetoresistance, Shubnikov–de Haas oscillations, or the common positive magnetoresistance in metals. Other effects occur in magnetic metals, such as negative magnetoresistance in ferromagnets or anisotropic magnetoresistance (AMR). Finally, in multicomponent or multilayer systems, giant magnetoresistance (GMR), tunnel magnetoresistance (TMR), colossal magnetoresistance (CMR), and extraordinary magnetoresistance (EMR) can be observed.
Spintronics, also known as spin electronics, is the study of the intrinsic spin of the electron and its associated magnetic moment, in addition to its fundamental electronic charge, in solid-state devices. The field of spintronics concerns spin-charge coupling in metallic systems; the analogous effects in insulators fall into the field of multiferroics.
In materials that exhibit antiferromagnetism, the magnetic moments of atoms or molecules, usually related to the spins of electrons, align in a regular pattern with neighboring spins pointing in opposite directions. This is, like ferromagnetism and ferrimagnetism, a manifestation of ordered magnetism. The phenomenon of antiferromagnetism was first introduced by Lev Landau in 1933.
A ferrimagnetic material is a material that has populations of atoms with opposing magnetic moments, as in antiferromagnetism, but these moments are unequal in magnitude, so a spontaneous magnetization remains. This can for example occur when the populations consist of different atoms or ions (such as Fe2+ and Fe3+).
Remanence or remanent magnetization or residual magnetism is the magnetization left behind in a ferromagnetic material after an external magnetic field is removed. Colloquially, when a magnet is "magnetized", it has remanence. The remanence of magnetic materials provides the magnetic memory in magnetic storage devices, and is used as a source of information on the past Earth's magnetic field in paleomagnetism. The word remanence is from remanent + -ence, meaning "that which remains". The origins of remanence originate from some point after 1850.
Coercivity, also called the magnetic coercivity, coercive field or coercive force, is a measure of the ability of a ferromagnetic material to withstand an external magnetic field without becoming demagnetized. Coercivity is usually measured in oersted or ampere/meter units and is denoted HC.
Tunnel magnetoresistance (TMR) is a magnetoresistive effect that occurs in a magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ), which is a component consisting of two ferromagnets separated by a thin insulator. If the insulating layer is thin enough, electrons can tunnel from one ferromagnet into the other. Since this process is forbidden in classical physics, the tunnel magnetoresistance is a strictly quantum mechanical phenomenon, and lies in the study of spintronics.
Giant magnetoresistance (GMR) is a quantum mechanical magnetoresistance effect observed in multilayers composed of alternating ferromagnetic and non-magnetic conductive layers. The 2007 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Albert Fert and Peter Grünberg for the discovery of GMR, which also sets the foundation for the study of spintronics.
Peter Andreas Grünberg was a German physicist, and Nobel Prize in Physics laureate for his discovery with Albert Fert of giant magnetoresistance which brought about a breakthrough in gigabyte hard disk drives.
Helimagnetism is a form of magnetic ordering where spins of neighbouring magnetic moments arrange themselves in a spiral or helical pattern, with a characteristic turn angle of somewhere between 0 and 180 degrees. It results from the competition between ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic exchange interactions. It is possible to view ferromagnetism and antiferromagnetism as helimagnetic structures with characteristic turn angles of 0 and 180 degrees respectively. Helimagnetic order breaks spatial inversion symmetry, as it can be either left-handed or right-handed in nature.
Spin-polarized scanning tunneling microscopy (SP-STM) is a type of scanning tunneling microscope (STM) that can provide detailed information of magnetic phenomena on the single-atom scale additional to the atomic topography gained with STM. SP-STM opened a novel approach to static and dynamic magnetic processes as precise investigations of domain walls in ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic systems, as well as thermal and current-induced switching of nanomagnetic particles.
Gallium manganese arsenide, chemical formula (Ga,Mn)As is a magnetic semiconductor. It is based on the world's second most commonly used semiconductor, gallium arsenide,, and readily compatible with existing semiconductor technologies. Differently from other dilute magnetic semiconductors, such as the majority of those based on II-VI semiconductors, it is not paramagnetic but ferromagnetic, and hence exhibits hysteretic magnetization behavior. This memory effect is of importance for the creation of persistent devices. In (Ga,Mn)As, the manganese atoms provide a magnetic moment, and each also acts as an acceptor, making it a p-type material. The presence of carriers allows the material to be used for spin-polarized currents. In contrast, many other ferromagnetic magnetic semiconductors are strongly insulating and so do not possess free carriers. (Ga,Mn)As is therefore a candidate material for spintronic devices but it is likely to remain only a testbed for basic research as its Curie temperature could only be raised up to approximately 200 K.
The term magnetic structure of a material pertains to the ordered arrangement of magnetic spins, typically within an ordered crystallographic lattice. Its study is a branch of solid-state physics.
In magnetism, a nanomagnet is a nanoscopic scale system that presents spontaneous magnetic order (magnetization) at zero applied magnetic field (remanence).
In its most general form, the magnetoelectric effect (ME) denotes any coupling between the magnetic and the electric properties of a material. The first example of such an effect was described by Wilhelm Röntgen in 1888, who found that a dielectric material moving through an electric field would become magnetized. A material where such a coupling is intrinsically present is called a magnetoelectric.
Magnonics is an emerging field of modern magnetism, which can be considered a sub-field of modern solid state physics. Magnonics combines the study of waves and magnetism. Its main aim is to investigate the behaviour of spin waves in nano-structure elements. In essence, spin waves are a propagating re-ordering of the magnetisation in a material and arise from the precession of magnetic moments. Magnetic moments arise from the orbital and spin moments of the electron, most often it is this spin moment that contributes to the net magnetic moment.
Spinterface is a term coined to indicate an interface between a ferromagnet and an organic semiconductor. This is a widely investigated topic in molecular spintronics, since the role of interfaces plays a huge part in the functioning of a device. In particular, spinterfaces are widely studied in the scientific community because of their hybrid organic/inorganic composition. In fact, the hybridization between the metal and the organic material can be controlled by acting on the molecules, which are more responsive to electrical and optical stimuli than metals. This gives rise to the possibility of efficiently tuning the magnetic properties of the interface at the atomic scale.
Magnetic 2D materials or magnetic van der Waals materials are two-dimensional materials that display ordered magnetic properties such as antiferromagnetism or ferromagnetism. After the discovery of graphene in 2004, the family of 2D materials has grown rapidly. There have since been reports of several related materials, all except for magnetic materials. But since 2016 there have been numerous reports of 2D magnetic materials that can be exfoliated with ease just like graphene.
Bernard Dieny is a research scientist and an entrepreneur. He is Chief Scientist at SPINTEC, a CEA/CNRS/UGA research laboratory that he co-founded in 2002 in Grenoble, France. He is also co-founder of two startup companies: Crocus Technology on MRAM and magnetic sensors in 2006 and EVADERIS on circuits design in 2014.
