Recent CEM results published in Nature Nanotechnology

Could diamonds be a computer’s best friend?

March 24, 2014

For the first time, CEM researchers have demonstrated that information can flow through a diamond wire. In the experiment, electrons did not flow through diamond as they do in traditional electronics; rather, they stayed in place and passed along a magnetic effect called “spin” to each other down the wire—like a row of sports spectators doing “the wave.

Spin could one day be used to transmit data in computer circuits—and this new experiment, done at The Ohio State University, revealed that diamond transmits spin better than most metals in which researchers have previously observed the effect.

Further information on this research can be found in this article and in the publication.

A team of CEM researchers including Profs. Fengyuan Yang, Pat Woodward, David McComb, Hamish Fraser, & Patricia Morris, as well as student and staff researchers Jeremy Lucy, Adam Hauser, Hailong Wang, Jenni Soliz, Manisha Dixit, and R. Williams have published an article in Applied Physics Letters titled, “Buffer-layer enhanced structural and electronic quality in ferrimagnetic Sr₂CrReO₆ epitaxial films.”

The article describes how the structural and electronic qualities in Sr2CrReO6 epitaxial films were enhanced through the minimization of defect states, particularly at the substrate – film interface. Minimization of the defect states was achieved through epitaxial growth of the Sr₂CrReO₆ double perovskite on an insulating and non-magnetic double perovskite buffer layer, Sr₂CrNbO₆. Crystalline quality and Cr/Re ordering in this material are crucial for intrinsic behavior such as semiconductivity at room temperature.

The article can be found here.

New imaging tool, “Scanned Spin-Precession Microscopy”

A new technique for imaging spin properties at the nanoscale, Scanned Spin-Precession Microscopy, works by incorporating a scannable micromagnetic tip in conjunction with any of a variety of established spin detection tools—electrical or optical, and improves upon their limited or non-existent imaging capabilities. The magnetic field gradient from the probe directly selects spins from certain regions of the sample for study. The technique can achieve high resolution, beyond the optical diffraction limit, governed by the field gradient strength in a manner analogous to MRI.

This new tool should help in further understanding the microscopic details relevant to spin and its transport and will be an asset to researchers in spintronics, especially in the study of technologically important materials such as silicon and graphene that have been challenging to investigate with current tools. The new technique, pioneered by a collaborative team of experimentalists and theorists from OSU and Texas A&M, is to be highlighted as an Editor’s Suggestion in Physical Review Letters.

The article can be read here and will be published in Physical Review Letters on 13 September 2013.

Exciting results which report an amplified “spin-Seebeck effect”, conducted by Christopher Jaworski, Roberto Myers, Zeke Johnston-Halperin and Jos Heremans, were published in the July 12th issue of Nature. The researchers are studying a magnetic effect which converts heat to electricity, called the “spin-Seebeck effect”, in which a flow of heat creates a current of electron spins in a magnetic material. This generates a voltage in an adjacent metal. The discovered “giant spin-Seebeck effect” was detected using a non-magnetic semiconductor and resulted in a 1-million-fold increase in power. The ultimate result of this research could be electronics that recycle heat into electricity, or a solid-state engine which converts heat to electricity.