Spintronics is today one of the important fields of condensed matter Physics and Nanoscience and it is also an emerging branch of the microelectronics industry in the perspective of the “Beyond CMOS” revolution.
Paris-Saclay University, the historical cradle of spintronics, gathers the majority of players in the Ile de-France Region. NanoSaclay, integrated in Paris-Saclay University, is an interdisciplinary cluster of excellence dedicated to nanosciences and nanotechnology and is today one of the world’s leading spintronics centers.
The aim of the SPiCY Flagship is not only to perpetuate and strengthen this leading position but also to better structure the local research effort and the associated technological developments.
It builds on the on-going development of the IMAGeSPIN experimental platform (2018 SESAME project from Ile de France). See list of equipments here.
In addition to the IMAGeSPIN platform, the possibilities offered by SPiCY’s fifth partner, the SOLEIL synchrotron, Paris-Saclay will have a set of facilities dedicated to spectroscopy and magnetic imaging unique in Europe
In this context, the SPiCY consortium is ideally positioned to address some of today’s major questions in spintronics and nanomagnetism:
- How to efficiently create pure spin currents?
- How to control and detect such spin currents?
- How such a spin current behaves when propagating in very non-collinear, and even sometimes topological, spin textures?
- How to inject a spin current and use it as a source of local torque in thin or multilayer ferrimagnetic or antiferromagnetic layers?
- What happens at the ultimate (femto-attosecond) time scale when spins interact with magnetic moments?
- What are the spin currents properties in 2D systems?
- How can they be coupled with other fundamental excitations such magnons, phonons, photons or skyrmions in order to propagate the spin information over long distances?