Joseph Sklenar
Wayne State University, MI·Physics
Antiferromagnets are materials whose tiny internal magnets point in opposite directions to their neighbors, so the material shows no overall magnetism. Inside them, these magnetic moments can oscillate together at billions to trillions of cycles per second (GHz to THz).
- Fields
Physics
Materials Science
Engineering
- Topics
antiferromagnets
magnons
spin waves
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jul 2027
What they work on
- Synthesize synthetic antiferromagnets by sputter deposition, varying the number of ferromagnetic layers and the non-magnetic spacer material, to excite magnons (spin waves) and create magnon-magnon interactions.
- Build heterostructures that pair bulk antiferromagnetic oxides Fe2O3, Cr2O3 and NiO with ferromagnetic films, using coupling to short-wavelength ferromagnetic magnons to tune the sub-THz and THz energy spectrum.
- Use interactions between acoustic and optical magnon modes, the in-phase and out-of-phase spin oscillations, to control the magnon energy spectrum in layered films.
- Characterize magnetic dynamics with conventional ferromagnetic resonance, spin-torque ferromagnetic resonance and frequency-domain THz spectroscopy to measure how the engineered structures excite and shift antiferromagnetic modes.
More about the research
That speed could power future terahertz devices for communications, computing, sensing and ultrafast magnetic memory. The catch is that antiferromagnets barely respond to outside magnetic fields, which makes their oscillations very hard to excite or steer.
Why it matters
Controlling ultrafast magnetic oscillations in antiferromagnets could open a route to terahertz electronics and ultrafast magnetic memory, technologies that do not yet exist. That would matter for future high-speed communications, computing and sensing hardware. Practical ways to excite and tune these sub-THz and THz modes have not been shown, and this work aims to supply them.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Julius De Rojas
Oklahoma State University, OK·Physics
Establish how voltage-driven migration of oxygen and lithium ions (magneto-ionics) changes spin-wave behavior in magnetic thin films, producing large changes that persist without power, measured with Brillouin light scattering and ferromagnetic resonance.
Dmytro Bozhko
University of Colorado Colorado Springs, CO·Physics·Early-career
Observe and compare magnon Bose-Einstein condensate dynamics in 3D, quasi-2D and quasi-1D ferromagnetic structures, using nanofabricated samples and Brillouin light scattering spectroscopy, to find the critical sizes that support a condensate.
Jian Liu
University of Tennessee-Knoxville, TN·Physics·Early-career
Grow atomically thin iridium oxide layers by in-situ-monitored pulsed-laser deposition, designed so that spin-orbit coupling tilts the spins while overall spin symmetry is kept.
The school
Wayne State University: 21 labs on PI Pages, $292M a year on research, 194 research doctorates a year.
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