EMAGICS · Atomistic spin dynamics and spectroscopic investigation of spin-induced magnetoelectric multiferroic materials

Atomistic spin dynamics and spectroscopic investigation of spin-induced magnetoelectric multiferroic materials

If 60 years took us to get from the room-sized computer of the 1960’s to the extremely powerful smartphones of the 2020s, we are just on the threshold of the era of electrically controllable nanoscale storage, which will lead to thinner, lighter and flexible devices, with significantly high and sustainable energetic efficiencies and huge capacities. Multiferroics (MFs) are materials that can combine at least two primary ferroic properties: ferromagnetism, ferroelectricity and ferroelasticity. In the case of magnetoelectric (ME) MFs, coupling between ferroelectricity and ferromagnetism occurs.The use of MFs can provide electrically written and magnetically read devices, thus faster, low-energy consumption and with a non-destructive magnetic read operation. Particularly for the case of spintronics memories, the presence of the ME effect in MFs may increase the number of logic states from 2 to 4 (or 8), due to the additional binary state emerging from such multifunctionality. Most importantly, the ability to manipulate the magnetization by electric fields leads to simple, cost-effective and energetically sustainable technological strategies. An even more promising route to design efficient future hybrid devices is the use of the dynamical ME effect, where the order parameters of magnetization and polarization are not static, but oscillatory. Very often, in this dynamical regime, elementary excitations called electromagnons emerge, as “carriers” of such dynamical ME coupling. These spin excitations can be tuned by external magnetic and/or electric fields, thus promoting the modulation of the index of refraction by both static fields and electromagnetic radiation. EMAGICS project aims at a clearer understanding of the magnetoelectric (ME) multiferroic (MF) properties of novel materials, from the macroscopic to the quantum microscopic level, encompassing a series of advanced experimental and computational techniques. The acronym “EMAGICS” stands for “Electromagnonics”, a field that studies the dynamical coupling between the electronic and magnetic properties of ME materials. Merging theory and experiment is the optimal approach for achieving a better understanding of such exotic and sophisticated physical concepts. EMAGICS has employed a combination of first principles calculations and atomistic spin dynamics, together with experimental spectroscopic investigation, for a series of new ME MF materials. The main research objectives of EMAGICS are: (RO1) to address the origin of the ME coupling in the polar antiferromagnets (AFM) Ni-based tellurates, (RO2) to propose new spin-induced ME MF systems, and (RO3) to synthesise and experimentally investigate the static and dynamical ME effects in these new compounds.

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