Hybrid yttrium iron garnet-ferromagnet structures for spin-wave devices

Abstract

We study coupled ferromagnetic layers, which could facilitate low loss, sub 100 nm wavelength spin-wave propagation and manipulation. One of the layers is a low-loss garnet film (such as yttrium iron garnet (YIG)) that enables long-distance, coherent spin-wave propagation. The other layer is made of metal-based (Permalloy, Co, and CoFe) magnetoelectronic structures that can be used to generate, manipulate, and detect the spin waves. Using micromagnetic simulations, we analyze the interactions between the spin waves in the YIG and the metallic nanomagnet structures and demonstrate the components of a scalable spin-wave based signal processing device. We argue that such hybrid-metallic ferromagnet structures can be the basis of potentially high-performance, ultra low-power computing devices.