Nanoscience advances on I06 - Understanding Magnetism
Extending our knowledge of how magnetic materials behave on an atomic scale has led to considerable technological advances, particularly in the area of information storage.
Scientists from the University of Leeds have been using the PhotoEmission Electron Microscope (PEEM) on the Nanoscience beamline (I06) to image the structure of magnetic domain walls, the boundary between areas of material with uniform magnetization. The group has modelled the way that these walls move when current is applied, a technique which has promising applications in writing data in more efficient digital memory devices, as well as improving our fundamental understanding of magnetism. The micromagnetic structure can be very complex, but the data obtained through the PEEM imaging provides enough information to build up detailed models and predict the behaviour of these nanostructures.
This work has been published in the journal Physical Review B.
PEEM micrographs being processed into a vector map (coloured)
Prof Chris Marrows, University of Leeds
"Experimental determination of spin-transfer torque nonadiabaticity parameter and spin polarization in permalloy", S. Lepadatu, M.C. Hickey, A. Potenza, H. Marchetto, T.R. Charlton, S. Langridge, S.S. Dhesi, C.H. Marrows, Physical Review B (2009)
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevB.79.094402