Nanoscale spin-wave circuits based on engineered reconfigurable spin-textures

Edoardo Albisetti,Silvia Tacchi,Sebastian Wintz,Simone Finizio,Riccardo Bertacco,Raffaele Silvani,Annalisa Calò,Daniela Petti,Xiaorui Zheng,Jörg Raabe,Giacomo Sala,Elisa Riedo

doi:10.1038/s42005-018-0056-x

Abstract

Magnonics is gaining momentum as an emerging technology for information processing. The wave character and Joule heating-free propagation of spin-waves hold promises for highly efficient computing platforms, based on integrated magnonic circuits. The realization of such nanoscale circuitry is crucial, although extremely challenging due to the difficulty of tailoring the nanoscopic magnetic properties with conventional approaches. Here we experimentally realize a nanoscale reconfigurable spin-wave circuitry by using patterned spin-textures. By space and time-resolved scanning transmission X-ray microscopy imaging, we directly visualize the channeling and steering of propagating spin-waves in arbitrarily shaped nanomagnonic waveguides, with no need for external magnetic fields or currents. Furthermore, we demonstrate a prototypic circuit based on two converging nanowaveguides, allowing for the tunable spatial superposition and interference of confined spin-waves modes. This work paves the way to the use of engineered spin-textures as building blocks of spin-wave based computing devices.

Highlights

IntroductionThe wave character and Joule heating-free propagation of spin-waves hold promises for highly efficient computing platforms, based on integrated magnonic circuits
Magnonics is gaining momentum as an emerging technology for information processing
We demonstrate the fundamental building blocks of spin-waves circuitry, i.e., arbitrarily shaped magnonic nanowaveguides and a prototypic spin-wave circuit allowing for the tunable superposition of signals propagating in two converging waveguides, by patterning the spin-texture of a ferromagnetic thin film via thermally assisted magnetic scanning probe lithography[30,31]

Summary

Introduction

The wave character and Joule heating-free propagation of spin-waves hold promises for highly efficient computing platforms, based on integrated magnonic circuits The realization of such nanoscale circuitry is crucial, extremely challenging due to the difficulty of tailoring the nanoscopic magnetic properties with conventional approaches. We demonstrate the fundamental building blocks of spin-waves circuitry, i.e., arbitrarily shaped magnonic nanowaveguides and a prototypic spin-wave circuit allowing for the tunable superposition of signals propagating in two converging waveguides, by patterning the spin-texture of a ferromagnetic thin film via thermally assisted magnetic scanning probe lithography (tam-SPL)[30,31]. The experimental realization of reconfigurable nanomagnonic circuits based on doman walls paves the way to the use of engineered spin-textures as building blocks of spin-wave based computing devices

Methods

Results

Conclusion