Towards Ultralow-Power and Scalable Nanodevices Using 2D Magnets

Dr. Yingying Wu

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

 

Abstract

The current electronics industry is facing challenges both from the fundamental physics limit of silicon on the small scale, and the new demand for big-data applications on the large scale. Spintronics, utilizing spin degree of freedom, is a promising candidate for future beyond-CMOS devices and systems, thanks to their low power consumption, nonvolatility, and easy 3D integration. The emerging 2D magnets can preserve magnetism even in monolayer (under 1 nm) limits, and thus they are promising to further scale down devices. They have a sharp interface and atomically thin nature, and designer quantum heterostructures and more functionalities (e.g. stacking order, twist angle, thickness, and electric gating) can be achieved. In this talk, I will discuss 2D spintronics on skyrmions and antiferromagnets, and their potential applications. In the first part, with a stacking order degree of freedom, I will present observations of real-space topological spin textures - magnetic skyrmions, in 2D ferromagnet/transition metal dichalcogenide heterostructures. This is the first direct observation of skyrmion lattice in 2D layered magnets. By further extending the heterostructure to a 2D ferromagnet/2D ferromagnet system, I will present the vertical imprinting of skyrmions to neighboring layers, adding new functionality to skyrmion-based spintronics. In the second part, I will discuss the exchange coupling and voltage controlled magnetism in 2D antiferromagnet-based heterostructures, a step towards energy-efficient and fast spintronics. I will also discuss future directions, including energy efficient control in skyrmions and unconventional computing with spintronics.

 

Speaker Biography

Dr. Wu is currently a postdoctoral associate at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a postdoctoral fellow in CIQM at Harvard University. She obtained her PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles in 2020. Before that, she received a master degree in physics from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and a bachelor degree in Physics from Nanjing University. Her research focuses on emerging materials and devices for nanoelectronics.