Cerdanyola del Vallès, 14th March 2018. Magnetite is a candidate material for various applications in spintronics, meaning that can be employed in devices where the spin of the electron is used to store or manipulate information. However, when it is necessary to create structures of the material at the nanometric scale, their properties get worse. A study, recently published in the scientific journal Nanoscale, has proved that, with suitable growth, magnetite could be used to create nanostructured magnetic elements without losing their properties.
"Oxides have been proposed to be used for spin waves in triangular structures for computing. And our results suggest that magnetite could be used for this purpose, "says Juan de la Figuera, scientist from the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC).
Researchers were able to prepare the material by reactive molecular beam epitaxy. They optimized their growth thanks to real-time observation and have determined the magnetic domains and Curie's temperature at the CIRCE beamline of the ALBA Synchrotron. These experiments are in agreement with micromagnetic simulations. "We believe that these results could be applied to a wide group of oxides," comments de la Figuera.
The work has involved researchers from CSIC (Institute of Ceramics and Glass and "Rocasolano" Institute of Physical Chemistry), the Complutense University of Madrid and the ALBA Synchrotron.
Figure:
Figure: Magnetic domains observed experimentally (left) and obtained by micro-magnetic calculations (right) in nanometer thick magnetite islands. The color indicates in-plane orientation of the magnetization, according to the color-scale circles at the bottom.