The ECE Department will be hosting a seminar: "Opportunities and Challenges in Spintronics: A first principles perspective" with Prof. Nicholas Kioussis from California State University Northridge. This will be on Thursday, June 15th at 2pm in L440.

Abstract:

I will review our computational developments during the past decade to explore several open questions and provide guiding rules for the design of ultra-low energy spintronic devices. (1) Exploit the large spin orbit coupling and emergence of magnetism in ultrathin heavy-metal-based ferromagnetic (FM) or antiferromagnetic (AFM) heterostructures to achieve large perpendicular magnetic anisotropy and high voltage-controlled magnetic anisotropy efficiency, the two major challenges for ultralow-power and high density nonvolatile MeRAM devices; (2) Employ the effect of alloying or phonons to enhance the charge-to-spin current conversion efficiency in nonmagnetic heavy metals; (3) Dynamically control both the direction and amount of current-induced spin accumulation at heavy metal/FM interface using an electric field in an oxide capped spin orbit torque device; and (4) Search and identify novel two-dimensional van der Waals Dirac half-metal magnets characterized by a band structure with a large gap in one spin channel and a Dirac cone in the other with carrier mobilities comparable to those in graphene.

This research was supported by NSF-PREM Grant No. DMR-1205734 and NSF Grant No. ERC TANMS-116050.

Nicholas Kioussis obtained his PhD from University of Illinois at Chicago in 1984 after which he became a postdoctoral researcher at West Virginia University. He joined California State University Northridge (CSUN) as a faculty member of Physics in 1987. He is the founder and director of the W. M. Keck Computational Materials Theory Center at California State University Northridge. His research centers in the areas of electronic structure calculations of strongly correlated systems, multiscale modeling of defects, spin transport in magnetic tunnel junctions, electric field control of magnetism in multiferroic heterostructures, and defect calculations in Type II Super Lattices.