METAFRUMAG - NOVEL NANOSTRUCTURED METAMATERIALS WITH CONTROL OF MAGNETIC FRUSTRATION FOR APPLICATIONS TO DIGITAL AND ELECTRONIC TECHNOLOGIES

Nanomagnet logic is a promising future computational technology combining data storage and processing using magnetic phenomena at the nanoscale and that is under continuous development all over the world. The objective of this project is to establish a close relationship between scientific and technical research for the development of new approaches to the key nanomagnet logic technology aimed at providing answers to the challenges related to "economy and digital society". This objective will be pursued using nanotechnology as a key enabling technology for new advanced magnetic metamaterials, based on the control of the physics of magnetic frustration, for nove land more efficient devices (ultralow power dissipation) for nanomagnet logic with applications to informacion processing digital data storage. Frustration in magnetic materials is a phenomenon due to the presence of competing interactions that lead to new physical phenomena of great interest for technological applications. In recent years a new perspective has been opened for the technological exploitation of frustration by creating artificial frustrated magnetic systems, so-called "artificial spin ice" (English: artificial spin ices, ASIs). ASIs sets consist of ferromagnetic nanostructures uniformly magnetized, which behave like macro-spins lithographically fabricated and arranged in a network so that they are interacting and these interactions are frustrated (frustration induced by geometry). Thereby, frustration and the consequent phenomenology in ASIs can be controlled through proper design of the shape and intrinsic magnetic properties of individual nanoelements as well as via their geometrical arrangement in networks. As such, ASIs form a metamaterial: one where the properties are designed and arise because the engineering properties of mesoscale, where all properties can be controlled by the size, shape, and placement of the nanomagnets. In this field of research, the group of CIC nanoGUNE Nanomagnetism is already playing a key role, as we have developed new processes that opened a clear path to the systematic experimental exploration of ASIs, which is the key starting point to optimize the design of metamaterials based on ASIs for technological applications [J.M. Porro, et al., New. J. Phys. 15, 055012, 2013]. Despite recent advances in the field, there are still many unanswered questions regarding the physical properties of ASIs arising from frustration that need to be tackled to allow for their exploitation as new technology-relevant metamaterials. From the strong and established position of our research group, here we propose to improve the design of ASIs by exploring the use of different materials to tune the intrinsic ferromagnetic properties (saturation magnetization, Curie temperature, and anisotropy) of the individual nanomagnets which make ASIs as well as to improve their design by reducing their size and precisely control their shape, to overcome some critics and known disadvantages of the current designs, which so far have not received the required attention. The ultimate goal is to open the pathway to the utilization of metamaterials based on ASIs for the development of more efficient devices for technological applications as: new logical-magnetic devices for digital information processing, novel magnetic recording media for digital data, and magnónic crystals" that exploit the high frequency magnetic properties of ASIs for radiofrequency applications.

This project has been funded by FIS2015-64519-R / MCIN/ AEI /10.13039/501100011033