Magnetic properties and materials articles within Nature Materials

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  • News & Views |

    Comb-shaped nanostrips pave the way for a fourfold velocity increase in the propagation of magnetic domain walls.

    • Geoffrey Beach

  • Commentary |

    Despite low transition temperatures, ferromagnetism in diluted magnetic semiconductors has been essential in exploring new ideas and concepts in spintronics, some of which have been successfully transferred to metallic ferromagnets.

    • Hideo Ohno

  • Review Article |

    In 2000, a seminal study predicted ferromagnetism above room temperature in diluted magnetic semiconductors and oxides, fuelling tremendous research activity that has lasted for a decade. Tomasz Dietl reviews the progress in understanding these materials over the past ten years, with a view to the future of semiconductor spintronics.

    • Tomasz Dietl

  • Letter |

    A spin-polarized current induces a spin torque on the magnetization of a ferromagnetic film, which according to theory leads to spin-wave emissions. These spin waves have now been observed with a mapping technique that shows a highly directional emission. The results are of key importance to understanding the physics of spin waves and their possible use in spintronic devices.

    • Vladislav E. Demidov
    • , Sergei Urazhdin
    •  & Sergej O. Demokritov

  • Letter |

    Domain walls in magnetic nanostructures could be used in information storage devices. The speed at which these domain walls can move when a magnetic field is applied has always been found to have a maximum. It is now shown that this can be increased by proper design of the magnetic structures, opening the way to faster and more reliable devices.

    • E. R. Lewis
    • , D. Petit
    •  & R. P. Cowburn

  • News & Views |

    Experiments on magnetic insulators and semiconductors imply that the spin Seebeck effect is conceptually different from the standard thermoelectric effect, launching new challenges for both theorists and experimentalists in spintronics.

    • Jairo Sinova

  • Letter |

    By using the spin Seebeck effect, the generation of an electric voltage from a heat gradient is demonstrated for the first time in an insulator. This finding extends the range of potential materials for thermoelectric applications, and provides a crucial piece of information for understanding the physics of the spin Seebeck effect.

    • K. Uchida
    • , J. Xiao
    •  & E. Saitoh

  • Letter |

    The generation of an electric voltage from a heat gradient is demonstrated for the first time in the ferromagnetic semiconductor GaMnAs. This allows flexible design of the magnetization directions, a large spin polarization, and measurements across the magnetic phase transition. The effect is observed even in the absence of longitudinal charge transport.

    • C. M. Jaworski
    • , J. Yang
    •  & R. C. Myers

  • News & Views |

    The discovery of a highly resistive ferrite magnet where a low magnetic field induces a ferroelectric polarization at room temperature is a key advance towards applications of magnetoelectric coupling.

    • Craig J. Fennie
    •  & Darrell G. Schlom

  • News & Views |

    A magnetically colour-tunable material is used to create colour-coded microparticles that can be manipulated using magnetic fields and are suitable for use in multiplex bioassays.

    • Kevin Braeckmans
    •  & Stefaan C. De Smedt

  • News & Views |

    A conventional material used in magnetic tunnel junctions with in-plane magnetization can also be magnetized perpendicularly, offering new possibilities for high-performance memory and logic circuits.

    • Andrew D. Kent

  • Letter |

    Biochemical assays that use magnetic beads are at present in frequent use. Colour-barcoded magnetic microparticles have now been created without using multiple pigmentations. The coding capacity far exceeds that of alternative spectral encoding systems and is demonstrated in a practical bioassay for DNA detection and identification.

    • Howon Lee
    • , Junhoi Kim
    •  & Sunghoon Kwon

  • Letter |

    Only few magnetoelectric materials, where magnetism and ferroelectricity are coupled, are known to exist at room temperature, and in most cases the magnetoelectric coupling is weak. The discovery of strong room-temperature magnetoelectric coupling in Sr3Co2Fe24O41 at low magnetic fields is therefore a significant advance towards the practical application of multiferroics.

    • Yutaro Kitagawa
    • , Yuji Hiraoka
    •  & Tsuyoshi Kimura

  • Article |

    The control of magnetization by electric fields is important for applications in data storage and sensing. An efficient control of exchange bias by electric fields has now been achieved in thin-film devices in which a ferroelectric antiferromagnet is coupled to a ferromagnet.

    • S. M. Wu
    • , Shane A. Cybart
    •  & R. C. Dynes

  • Letter |

    Regardless of what the origin of superconductivity is in the recently discovered iron-based superconductor, it would be useful to know how good these materials are for applications. Sophisticated experiments now show that SmFeAs0.75F0.25 exhibits a high and nearly isotropic critical current, a potentially important result for their use in applications.

    • Philip J. W. Moll
    • , Roman Puzniak
    •  & Bertram Batlogg

  • Letter |

    An important component of spintronics devices is the magnetic electrode, which is usually made from an inorganic alloy. However, an organic-based spin polarizer is now demonstrated, opening new possibilities for developing organic/inorganic hybrid spintronics devices.

    • Jung-Woo Yoo
    • , Chia-Yi Chen
    •  & A. J. Epstein

  • Letter |

    The simplest iron-based superconductor is the chalcogenide Fe1+yTe1−xSex. Previous work suggested a different magnetic origin of superconductivity owing to differences in its electronic states of this material and the iron pnictides, or at least in their parent compounds —the undoped and non-superconducting versions. The differences are now reconciled by showing a modification of the Fe1+yTe1−xSex states when the Se content is increased.

    • T. J. Liu
    • , J. Hu
    •  & C. Broholm

  • Article |

    In the standard model of particle physics the permanent electric dipole moment of particles is zero, although competing theories suggest it must exist to explain the asymmetry of matter and antimatter in the Universe. The design and synthesis of a new multiferroic material may now enable us to search for the electric dipole moment of electrons with unprecedented precision.

    • K. Z. Rushchanskii
    • , S. Kamba
    •  & N. A. Spaldin

  • Letter |

    Materials with perpendicular anisotropy receive considerable attention owing to their potential in being employed in efficient memory devices. It is now shown that a type of magnetic tunnel junction widely studied for in-plane magnetic anisotropy has all the properties necessary to realize stable and efficient devices based on perpendicular magnetic anisotropy.

    • S. Ikeda
    • , K. Miura
    •  & H. Ohno

  • Article |

    The control of magnetic properties by electric fields is key to realizing spintronics devices. The surface of the antiferromagnetic magnetoelectric Cr2O3 is now shown to exhibit room-temperature ferromagnetism, whose direction can be switched by an electric field. This magnetization switches the exchange-bias field with magnetic multilayers grown on Cr2O3, promising a new route towards room-temperature spintronics devices.

    • Xi He
    • , Yi Wang
    •  & Christian Binek

  • Letter |

    Topological insulators have been predicted and recently demonstrated experimentally in a series of binary alloys. It is now show theoretically that ternary half-Heusler alloys have electronic properties similar to those of the experimentally verified topological insulators, and represent a platform for observing quantum topological phenomena.

    • Hsin Lin
    • , L. Andrew Wray
    •  & M. Zahid Hasan

  • News & Views |

    The use of a ferroelectric tunnel junction to control the spin polarization of adjacent magnetic electrodes promises a new approach to the use of interface effects for low-power-consumption spintronic devices.

    • R. Ramesh

  • Letter |

    Solid-state materials showing giant caloric effects near room temperature could provide an alternative to cooling devices based on gas cycles. Strong emphasis has so far been dedicated to caloric effects induced by a magnetic field. It is now demonstrated that a small pressure applied to the compound Ni—Mn–In gives rise to a giant caloric response.

    • Lluís Mañosa
    • , David González-Alonso
    •  & Mehmet Acet

  • Letter |

    The strong dependence of the magnetic properties on the growth conditions in (Ga, Mn)As has created the view that ferromagnetism is associated with an intrinsic inhomogeneity. Muon-spin-relaxation experiments now show that strong and homogeneous ferromagnetism is instead present in both insulating and metallic films.

    • S. R. Dunsiger
    • , J. P. Carlo
    •  & Y. J. Uemura

  • News & Views |

    The observation of Aharonov–Bohm oscillations in nanoribbons of Bi2Se3 opens the way for electronic transport experiments in nanoscale three-dimensional topological insulators.

    • Thomas Ihn

  • News & Views |

    Conflicting observations of the speed at which various ferromagnetic materials respond to an external femtosecond laser excitation have generated considerable controversy. It is now shown that ferromagnets can be divided in two categories, according to the values of specific magnetic parameters.

    • Markus G. Münzenberg

  • Letter |

    Multiferroics are promising for their ability to use an electric polarization to control magnetism and vice versa. However, ferroelastic effects during the switching of multiferroics such as BiFeO3 destabilize the ferroelectric state. A new approach for the switching of these sorts of compound may now represent a solution to this problem.

    • S. H. Baek
    • , H. W. Jang
    •  & C. B. Eom

  • News & Views |

    The formation of vortices in multiferroic hexagonal manganites, where the sign of electric polarization changes six times around the vortex core, points towards the origin of composite multiferroic domain walls.

    • Maxim Mostovoy

  • Letter |

    Control of magnetization in ferromagnetic metals can be achieved through the spin torque of currents of spin-polarized electrons, usually injected externally. It is now shown that even without this spin-polarized injection, a current can induce strong spin torques through the Rashba effect. The efficiency of this process makes it a realistic candidate for room-temperature spintronic applications.

    • Ioan Mihai Miron
    • , Gilles Gaudin
    •  & Pietro Gambardella

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