Magnon valves based on YIG/NiO/YIG all-insulating magnon junctions

Abstract

As an alternative angular momentum carrier, magnons or spin waves can be utilized to encode information and breed magnon-based circuits with ultralow power consumption and non-Boolean data processing capability. In order to construct such a circuit, it is indispensable to design some electronic components with both long magnon decay and coherence length and effective control over magnon transport. Here we show that an all-insulating magnon junctions composed by a magnetic insulator (MI1)/antiferromagnetic insulator (AFI)/magnetic insulator (MI2) sandwich (Y3Fe5O12/NiO/Y3Fe5O12) can completely turn a thermogradient-induced magnon current on or off as the two Y3Fe5O12 layers are aligned parallel or anti-parallel. The magnon decay length in NiO is about 3.5∼4.5 nm between 100 K and 200 K for thermally activated magnons. The insulating magnon valve (magnon junction), as a basic building block, possibly shed light on the naissance of efficient magnon-based circuits, including non-Boolean logic, memory, diode, transistors, magnon waveguide and switches with sizable on-off ratios.

Modulation of magnon spin transport in a magnetic gate transistor

“…Additionally, the modulation of magnon spin transport would also enable the use of such devices for logic operations [5]. This has led to a recent surge in experiments exploring the control of magnon transport via magnon-valves [6][7][8] and in the magnon transistor geometry [9]. In order to implement magnonic logic devices, two distinctive features are important: control of the magnon spin transport and storage of information in a memory device.…”

Comparison of spin-wave transmission in parallel and antiparallel magnetic configurations

“…Spin waves, or magnons, as the elementary excitation of the magnetic system, are regarded as the potential information carriers. The research field of magnons is called magnonics [11][12][13][14][15] , in which the kernel is to manipulate the magnon transmission by various designs [16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27] . Among these works, Wu et al 20 fabricated a new type of device, YIG/Au/YIG, which was named as the magnon valve and drew widespread attentions.…”

Damping Enhancement in Coherent Ferrite–Insulating-Paramagnet Bilayers

“…Spin transport and enhanced damping through spin pumping 24 in ferrite/spin-orbit-metal structures has already been extensively studied 3,4,[12][13][14][15]25 . Moreover, the low-damping ferrite can be interfaced with an insulating antiferromagnetic or paramagnetic oxide, in which signals can be transmitted as a pure magnon spin current [26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40] . While interfacing low-damping ferrites with insulating anti/paramagnetic oxides has enabled prototypes of magnon spin valves [37][38][39] , the fundamental impact of insulating oxide interfaces on spin dynamics has remained mostly unexplored.…”

“…Moreover, the low-damping ferrite can be interfaced with an insulating antiferromagnetic or paramagnetic oxide, in which signals can be transmitted as a pure magnon spin current [26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40] . While interfacing low-damping ferrites with insulating anti/paramagnetic oxides has enabled prototypes of magnon spin valves [37][38][39] , the fundamental impact of insulating oxide interfaces on spin dynamics has remained mostly unexplored. In particular, it is an open question whether or how damping of the ferrite is enhanced from spin dissipation within the bulk of the adjacent anti/paramagnetic oxide or from spin scattering at the oxide interface.…”