Vivek Amin of NIST

Information and communications technology is predicted to account for 10% to 20% of the world’s power consumption within a decade.  Alleviating this rise in power consumption requires rethinking the way we electronically process and store information.  Spintronics, or spin electronics, offers a possible solution to this problem by using spin currents or spin waves rather than conventional charge currents to manipulate information.  A key ingredient in spintronics is spin-orbit coupling: the relativistic coupling between a particle’s spin and orbital moments.  Spin-orbit coupling permits conduction electrons to extract a virtually unlimited amount of angular momentum from the crystal lattice, potentially enabling energy efficient information processing.  In this talk, I will discuss the electrical manipulation of a ferromagnet’s magnetization through spin-orbit coupling.  This phenomenon, known as spin-orbit torque, could help harness all the advantages of different electronic memories (e.g. speed, nonvolatility, radiation hardness) into one device.  The present understanding of spin-orbit torque is incomplete because there is no consensus among theory and experiment over the important mechanisms.  We review the traditional spin-orbit torque mechanisms and then show that novel interfacial or bulk effects are needed to explain recent experiments.  Shedding light on these mechanisms will help clarify the nature of spin-orbit torque, creating exciting new possibilities for current-controlled magnetization dynamics with attractive applications for information processing.

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Address:100 Bureau Dr., NIST, Gaithersburg, Maryland, United States, 20899