Application Examples
Validated magnetic thin films that enable disruptive resettable patterning technology
Our materials are not limited to the familiar crystal structures
The common approach to developing new materials is to focus on a known prototype structure and apply brute force - simply testing different combinations of elements. While some evolutionary improvement may occur, it is hardly a method for finding disruptive solutions.
Functional Thin Film Materials
Technologically competitive new class of insulating ferromagnetic thin film materials. Economic and environmental aspects have been considered from the beginning of the material design. Magnetization and conductivity can be tuned by controlling the composition. Our materials can be used in tunable devices to reduce the number of components required in electronics.
Films grow excellently on oxidized silicon, silicon carbide, aluminum nitride, gallium nitride, and optically transparent single crystals such as lithium niobate, lithium tantalate, and sapphire, and are suitable for multilayer device fabrication.
The magnetization of a few nm thick films exceeds that of Y3Fe5O12 (YIG). We have also developed ferromagnetic thin film insulators from common non-magnetic cations. The films retain their magnetization up to elevated temperatures and can be used in practical devices. The material is compatible with various high-k materials. The materials are transparent to visible light and can be used in magneto-optical applications.
The functional properties of the films, such as magnetization and electrical resistivity, can be adjusted during film growth while maintaining the crystal structure and lattice matching. This allows the fabrication of multilayer devices without detrimental interfaces: the composition can be continuously adjusted during film growth. Films are suitable as platforms for All-Spin-Logic (ASL) circuits and devices. In particular, the ability to exploit space in three dimensions is attractive. The ability to adjust the magnetization, either by composition or strain, can be applied to control the ferromagnetic resonance frequency (FMR). FMR determines the operating frequency of RF devices. Multilayer structures find applications in sensitive magnetic field sensors and spintronic applications.
Advantages
Ferromagnetic Insulators to Elevated Temperatures. Materials that are ferromagnetic insulators up to and above 400 K can serve as media for processing information in the form of spin waves induced in ferromagnetic media. The low losses in ferromagnetic insulators are due to the absence of Eddy currents - making the material a very attractive alternative to metallic ferromagnetic layers and materials that are ferromagnetic insulators only at very low temperatures.
Better alternative for rare earth, iron and osmium based compounds. Our materials are RoHS compliant: they do not contain heavy metals or hexavalent chromium. They also do not contain rare earth elements or iron. Rare earth elements (REE) are subject to sudden price changes, although they can be substituted in many applications.
Technologically viable, sustainable and environmentally
friendly thin film compounds
For various applications, we provide both highly magnetized ferromagnetic insulators and ferromagnetic conductors with excellent lattice matching through our processing technique. An example is shown here.
By adjusting the growth parameters in-situ, the manufacturing process can be reduced in number of steps without compromising the high crystalline quality of the films.
No cooling required
Examples include IoT, 5G and 6G technologies such as microwave devices, antenna and waveguide structures, sensors, memories and all-spin logic (ASL) devices. In addition to materials, we design and test tunable RF devices. Our focus is on fast, small and low power solutions for next generation devices operating at tens of GHz frequencies.
Antiferromagnetic resonance - either in single phase films or artificial antiferromagnetic structures - can even be pushed into the THz range.
Modeling and experiments
With device dimensions below tens of nanometers, standard data modeling techniques are inadequate. We have many years of experience in structural modeling, which is an essential part of materials R&D. We are constantly developing our own computer code to respond to new technical challenges.