Experiments show that altermagnetic Mn5Si3 generates spin currents despite zero net magnetization, demonstrating a central prediction of altermagnetic spintronics.

Experiments show that altermagnetic Mn5Si3 generates spin currents despite zero net magnetization, demonstrating a central prediction of altermagnetic spintronics.

Experiments show that altermagnetic Mn5Si3 generates spin currents despite zero net magnetization, demonstrating a central prediction of altermagnetic spintronics.

Researchers miniaturized the Archimedes’ screw down to a single molecule, opening new pathways for nanoscale electronics and spintronics.

Experiments show that altermagnetic Mn5Si3 generates spin currents despite zero net magnetization, demonstrating a central prediction of altermagnetic spintronics.

A team of Yale researchers has figured out what gives a magnetic material its mysterious properties, a discovery that could help boost computing memory and the field of "spintronics." Their work is published in Physical Review Letters.

Magnetic tunnel junctions based on ferromagnets are canonical devices in spintronics, with wide-ranging applications in data storage, computing and sensing. They simultaneously exhibit mechanisms for electrical detection and control of magnetic order through the tunnelling magnetoresistance (TMR)1,2,3,4,5 and spin-transfer torque6,7,8,9 effects, respectively. It was long assumed that neither of these effects could be sizeable in all-antiferromagnetic tunnel junctions (AATJs), considering that they have no net magnetization. However, it was recently shown that AATJs based on chiral antiferromagnets do exhibit TMR due to their non-relativistic momentum-dependent spin polarization and cluster magnetic octupole moment, which are manifestations of their spin–split band structure10,11,12,13. However, the reciprocal effect, that is, the antiferromagnetic counterpart of spin–transfer torque, has been assumed non-existent due to the total electric current being spin-neutral. Here we report nanoscale AATJs that display this reciprocal effect, which we term octupole-driven spin-transfer torque (OTT). We demonstrate current-induced OTT switching of PtMn3|MgO|PtMn3 AATJs, with a TMR value of 363% at room temperature and switching current densities of the order of 10 MA cm–2. Our theoretical modelling explains the origin of OTT in terms of the imbalance between intra- and inter-sublattice spin currents across the AATJ, and, equivalently, in terms of the non-zero net cluster...

Ultrafast non-thermal control of magnetism is a major goal of spintronics, however, in centrosymmetric materials, symmetry typically forbids direct control via electric fields. Here, Lv, Meese and coa...