KAUST’s Second International Spin-Orbit Torque Workshop was held on February 26 – 28. The workshop gathered scientists in spin electronics, or “spintronics,” from around the world to discuss the emerging field of spin-orbit torques.

The spintronics field marries nanoscale electronics and magnetism, and spin-orbit torque is an alternative method to control magnetism in nanodevices. The phenomenon was predicted in 2008 in work led by Aurelien Manchon, KAUST Assistant Professor of Material Science and Engineering, and Professor Shufeng Zhang from the University of Arizona, and was confirmed experimentally a year later.

“Spin-orbit torque is currently attracting massive attention from researchers and the microelectronics industry, as it offers a new paradigm for non-volatile magnetic memories,” said Prof. Manchon, who was also a speaker and chair of the organizing committee for the event.

The workshop featured talks by world-renowned speakers in the field, including M.I. Dyakonov, a pioneer in semiconductor spin physics, and Stuart Parkin, winner of the 2014 Millennium Technology Prize for his research in increasing magnetic disk drive storage capacity.

“I was impressed by the number of new results that were shared for the first time during the workshop,” said Prof. Manchon.

He noted the participants were fascinated by the announcement of the first demonstration of the electrical manipulation of an antiferromagnet, as this followed a theoretical prediction made by a collaboration of researchers from KAUST, the Institute of Physics in Prague, Czech Republic, and Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany. The first observation of room-temperature skyrmions in ultrathin metallic multilayers also triggered intense debates among the attendees, as skyrmions are topological magnetic defects that may be used for ultrahigh data storage.

“The workshop was designed to encourage interactions between the participants in its three chaired discussion sessions,” explained Prof. Manchon. “These sessions were a fantastic opportunity to share our views and understanding of complex effects and to identify the next ‘hot’ directions for research.”

Prof. Manchon noted that the next workshop will be held in Germany in 2016, with a following workshop in Korea in 2017.

“Although the conference began at KAUST, the fact that it will be held in Germany and later in Korea is a clear indication that the concept we developed for the workshop, which includes much interaction and discussion between participants, is attracting increasing interest in the field,” he said.

- by Caitlin Clark, KAUST News