Magnetic properties and materials articles within Nature Materials

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  • News & Views |

    Ultrashort laser pulses create strain waves that generate highly mobile charges at an oxide interface. These charges propagate into the oxide layer destroying its antiferromagnetic ordering and insulating properties, providing insight into the physics of metal–insulator transitions.

    • Valerio Scagnoli
    •  & Urs Staub

  • Letter |

    Antiferromagnetic order at room temperature is stabilized in Mn phthalocyanine layers in contact with a cobalt layer. In addition, the molecular layer pins the inorganic ferromagnetic layer through exchange bias at low temperature.

    • Manuel Gruber
    • , Fatima Ibrahim
    •  & Martin Bowen

  • News & Views |

    Exchange bias is a magnetic phenomenon that has facilitated the ever-increasing storage density of magnetic recording systems. The finding of high tunable exchange bias in certain Heusler alloys indicates new routes for the design of rare-earth-free hard magnetic materials.

    • Per Nordblad

  • Letter |

    The application of a high magnetic field is shown to induce spin-density-wave order in Sr3Ru2O7. This magnetic order correlates with the electronic nematic behaviour observed in this material.

    • C. Lester
    • , S. Ramos
    •  & S. M. Hayden

  • Letter |

    An applied voltage is shown to reversibly alter the magnetic anisotropy of an ultrathin Co film deposited on a GdOx dielectric layer, by switching the interfacial oxidation state.

    • Uwe Bauer
    • , Lide Yao
    •  & Geoffrey S. D. Beach

  • Letter |

    The temporal dynamics of phase transitions in strongly correlated states of matter are often dictated by the interplay between structural and electronic degrees of freedom. These are now probed in a perovskite manganite using an X-ray free-electron laser, and found to be well described by a single order parameter.

    • P. Beaud
    • , A. Caviezel
    •  & U. Staub

  • Commentary |

    Collective quantum phenomena such as magnetism, superfluidity and superconductivity have been pre-eminent themes of condensed-matter physics in the past century. Neutron scattering has provided unique insights into the microscopic origin of these phenomena.

    • Steven T. Bramwell
    •  & Bernhard Keimer

  • News & Views |

    Standing spin-waves can be excited in artificial chains of magnetic atoms using inelastic electron tunnelling spectroscopy, thereby offering a route to speed up the switching of their magnetization.

    • Stanislas Rohart
    •  & Guillemin Rodary

  • Letter |

    The excitations that determine the low-temperature properties of ferromagnetic materials are called spin waves. Using a combination of inelastic electron tunnelling spectroscopy and numerical simulations, the spin waves occurring in a one-dimensional chain of iron atoms deposited on Cu2N are now imaged, and their dynamics examined.

    • A. Spinelli
    • , B. Bryant
    •  & A. F. Otte

  • Letter |

    The Jahn–Teller distortion is an electronic effect that is known to couple charge, orbital and magnetic ordering phenomena in many complex solids. Using a combination of scattering and microscopy approaches, it is now shown that cooperative Jahn–Teller distortions in Na5/8MnO2 are coupled to an unusual ordering of Na vacancies.

    • Xin Li
    • , Xiaohua Ma
    •  & Gerbrand Ceder

  • Letter |

    Cerium hexaboride is a canonical heavy-fermion system that has come under scrutiny because of its so-called hidden order phase. Now, detailed inelastic neutron scattering experiments reveal an intense ferromagnetic mode, thus overturning the generally accepted view that antiferromagnetic interactions dominate the low-temperature behaviour of this system.

    • Hoyoung Jang
    • , G. Friemel
    •  & D. S. Inosov

  • Article |

    Heterostructures consisting of ferromagnets and heavy metals have become a focus of interest because their strong spin–orbit coupling allows for efficient current-induced magnetization switching phenomena. Now, a magnetically doped topological insulator bilayer is shown to display a range of appealing characteristics for current-induced magnetization switching, including a significantly enhanced efficiency.

    • Yabin Fan
    • , Pramey Upadhyaya
    •  & Kang L. Wang

  • News & Views |

    It is now possible to fabricate high-quality thin films of spin ice materials. At higher temperatures, they exhibit the hallmarks of a regular spin ice, but at lower temperatures their physics deviate significantly from the properties observed in the bulk.

    • Oleg Petrenko

  • Review Article |

    At present, magneto-, electro- and mechanocaloric effects are intensely investigated as the basis for possible cooling applications. This Review discusses and compares the three effects from both a fundamental and an applied perspective, with an emphasis on the experimental methods used to measure them.

    • X. Moya
    • , S. Kar-Narayan
    •  & N. D. Mathur

  • Article |

    A number of rare-earth pyrochlore materials are experimental realizations of spin ice, a magnetic state that shares a number of similarities with conventional water ice. Diffuse neutron scattering experiments now show that oxygen vacancies strongly affect the dynamics of monopole excitations in the spin-ice material Y2Ti2O7−δ.

    • G. Sala
    • , M. J. Gutmann
    •  & J. P. Goff

  • News & Views |

    By following three empirical rules it is possible to design and fabricate magnetic heterostructures or even devices whose magnetization can be controlled by means of circularly polarized femtosecond laser pulses, instead of applied magnetic fields.

    • Alexey V. Kimel

  • Article |

    A promising strategy for achieving information storage devices with low energy consumption is to avoid using applied magnetic fields as a means to manipulate the magnetization of materials. Now, the class of materials that can be switched by all-optical means is shown to extend beyond alloys consisting of rare earths and transition metals.

    • S. Mangin
    • , M. Gottwald
    •  & E. E. Fullerton

  • Letter |

    Electric-field-induced switching of material’s magnetization is a promising approach for achieving energy-efficient memory devices. By taking advantage of the strong magnetoelectric coupling with a BaTiO3 substrate, a small electric field is used to switch a FeRh thin film from anti- to ferromagnetic above room temperature.

    • R. O. Cherifi
    • , V. Ivanovskaya
    •  & M. Bibes

  • Progress Article |

    Memory devices based on the spin-transfer-torque effect offer a range of attractive properties, such as speed of operation and low energy cost. This Progress Article outlines a strategy for assembling different nanodevices based on the spin-torque effect to achieve qualitatively different computing architectures.

    • N. Locatelli
    • , V. Cros
    •  & J. Grollier

  • Letter |

    The interplay between the electronic and magnetic degrees of freedom in multiferroic materials offers promise for a range of applications. Now, a technique for imaging the magnetoelectric domains directly is developed, and demonstrated on the hexagonal manganite ErMnO3.

    • Yanan Geng
    • , Hena Das
    •  & Weida Wu

  • Letter |

    Clathrate materials have been the subject of intense investigation because of their beneficial properties, in particular their low thermal conductivities. Now, improved thermopower at high temperatures arising from strong electron correlation effects has been achieved in a type-I clathrate containing cerium guest atoms.

    • A. Prokofiev
    • , A. Sidorenko
    •  & S. Paschen

  • Letter |

    The insulator-to-metal transition occurring in magnetite is known as the Verwey transition, and its precise mechanism has recently come under renewed attention. Using pump–probe X-ray diffraction and optical reflectivity techniques, the dynamics of excitations known as trimerons are now examined, revealing the switching limits of this ubiquitous oxide material.

    • S. de Jong
    • , R. Kukreja
    •  & H. A. Dürr

  • Research Highlights |

    • Andrea Taroni

  • News & Views |

    Elucidating the relationship between the structure and magnetism of quasicrystals has long been a challenge. The discovery of an extended family of binary icosahedral quasicrystals with localized magnetic moments may be an important step in shedding light on this issue.

    • Marc de Boissieu

  • Letter |

    Controlling the direction of propagation of domain walls in magnetic nanowires is essential for their use in proposed device applications. It is now shown that Dzyaloshinskii–Moriya interactions determine the chirality of domain walls in metallic ferromagnets placed between a heavy metal and an oxide, which in turn means the direction of propagation can be determined by choosing suitable material properties.

    • Satoru Emori
    • , Uwe Bauer
    •  & Geoffrey S. D. Beach

  • Letter |

    At present, there are no known examples of binary icosahedral quasicrystals featuring localized magnetic moments. Now, a family of magnetic binary icosahedral quasicrystals is discovered, offering the possibility of studying the behaviour of coupled magnetic interactions in the presence of aperiodic structural order.

    • Alan I. Goldman
    • , Tai Kong
    •  & Paul C. Canfield

  • Article |

    Domain walls forming within magnetic nanowires offer a valuable degree of freedom with which to explore possible future information storage and processing architectures. By taking advantage of the piezoelectric characteristics of perpendicularly magnetized GaMnAsP/GaAs nanowires, large variations in the current-induced domain wall mobilities are obtained.

    • E. De Ranieri
    • , P. E. Roy
    •  & J. Wunderlich

  • Letter |

    Results suggesting the onset of magnetism at the interface between LaAlO3 and SrTiO3 have been among the more intriguing associated with this system. Using element-specific techniques such as X-ray magnetic circular dichroism, direct signatures of in-plane ferromagnetic order occurring at the interface are now reported.

    • J.-S. Lee
    • , Y. W. Xie
    •  & C.-C. Kao

  • News & Views |

    A series of breakthroughs is making the fabrication of single-atom devices possible. Their behaviour is controlled by the quantum state of single dopants, and they hold promise for applications such as quantum bits, magnetometers and memories.

    • Joaquin Fernández Rossier

  • Letter |

    The conversion of a spin current into an electric signal is known as the inverse spin Hall effect, and is expected to enable the full potential of spintronic devices to be realized. Although the effect has been extensively studied in inorganic metals and semiconductors, it is now shown also to occur in a solution-processed organic polymer placed in proximity to a magnetic insulator.

    • Kazuya Ando
    • , Shun Watanabe
    •  & Henning Sirringhaus

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