No Arabic abstract
Our world is composed of various materials with different structures, where spin structures have been playing a pivotal role in spintronic devices of the contemporary information technology. Apart from conventional collinear spin materials such as collinear ferromagnets and collinear antiferromagnetically coupled materials, noncollinear spintronic materials have emerged as hot spots of research attention owing to exotic physical phenomena. In this Review, we firstly introduce two types noncollinear spin structures, i.e., the chiral spin structure that yields real-space Berry phases and the coplanar noncollinear spin structure that could generate momentum-space Berry phases, and then move to relevant novel physical phenomena including topological Hall effect, anomalous Hall effect, multiferroic, Weyl fermions, spin-polarized current, and spin Hall effect without spin-orbit coupling in these noncollinear spin systems. Afterwards, we summarize and elaborate the electric-field control of the noncollinear spin structure and related physical effects, which could enable ultralow power spintronic devices in future. In the final outlook part, we emphasize the importance and possible routes for experimentally detecting the intriguing theoretically predicted spin-polarized current, verifying the spin Hall effect in the absence of spin-orbit coupling and exploring the anisotropic magnetoresistance and domain-wall-related magnetoresistance effects for noncollinear antiferromagnetic materials.
One of the main bottleneck issues for room-temperature antiferromagnetic spintronic devices is the small signal read-out owing to the limited anisotropic magnetoresistance in antiferromagnets. However, this could be overcome by either utilizing the Berry-curvature-induced anomalous Hall resistance in noncollinear antiferromagnets or establishing tunnel junction devices based on effective manipulation of antiferromagnetic spins. In this work, we demonstrate the giant piezoelectric strain control of the spin structure and the anomalous Hall resistance in a noncollinear antiferromagnetic metal - D019 hexagonal Mn3Ga. Furthermore, we built tunnel junction devices with a diameter of 200 nm to amplify the maximum tunneling resistance ratio to more than 10% at room-temperature, which thus implies significant potential of noncollinear antiferromagnets for large signal-output and high-density antiferromagnetic spintronic device applications.
The nonlinear optical and optoelectronic properties of graphene with the emphasis on the processes of harmonic generation, frequency mixing, photon drag and photogalvanic effects as well as generation of photocurrents due to coherent interference effects, are reviewed. The article presents the state-of-the-art of this subject, including both recent advances and well-established results. Various physical mechanisms controlling transport are described in depth including phenomenological description based on symmetry arguments, models visualizing physics of nonlinear responses, and microscopic theory of individual effects.
The polar covalent bond between a single Au atom terminating the apex of an atomic force microscope tip and a C atom of graphene on SiC(0001) is exposed to an external electric field. For one field orientation the Au-C bond is strong enough to sustain the mechanical load of partially detached graphene, whilst for the opposite orientation the bond breaks easily. Calculations based on density functional theory and nonequilibrium Greens function methods support the experimental observations by unveiling bond forces that reflect the polar character of the bond. Field-induced charge transfer between the atomic orbitals modifies the polarity of the different electronegative reaction partners and the Au-C bond strength.
Hybrid systems coupling quantum spin defects (QSD) and magnons can enable unique spintronic device functionalities and probes for magnetism. Here, we add electric field control of magnon-QSD coupling to such systems by integrating ferromagnet-ferroelectric multiferroic with nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center spins. Combining quantum relaxometry with ferromagnetic resonance measurements and analytical modeling, we reveal that the observed electric-field tuning results from ferroelectric polarization control of the magnon-generated fields at the NV. Exploiting the demonstrated control, we also propose magnon-enhanced hybrid electric field sensors with improved sensitivity.
A new class of orbital-dependent exchange-correlation (xc) potentials for applications in noncollinear spin-density-functional theory is developed. Starting from the optimized effective potential (OEP) formalism for the exact exchange potential - generalized to the noncollinear case - correlation effects are added via a self-consistent procedure inspired by the Singwi-Tosi-Land-Sjolander (STLS) method. The orbital-dependent xc potentials are applied to the Hubbard dimer in uniform and noncollinear magnetic fields and compared to exact diagonalization and to the Bethe-ansatz local spin-density approximation. The STLS gives the overall best performance for total energies, densities and magnetizations, particularly in the weakly to moderately correlated regime.