This research activity at IMM Agrate is mainly focused on the use of chemical methods such as atomic layer deposition (ALD) and chemical vapour deposition (CVD) to synthesize materials for applications in spin-based electronics (spintronics). The use of CVD/ALD for spintronics is appealing due to the cost effectiveness and the potentially easy technology transfer. Our work is focused on the growth of ferromagnetic thin films and half metals, also in direct contact with ultrathin oxides and two dimensional transition metal dichalconides (2D TMD). The first room-temperature-operating Fe3O4-based MTJ fully synthesized with in situ combined ALD-CVD methods was recently demonstrated by our group [1]. The integration of magnetic materials with 2D TMD materials is particularly attracting due to the predicted extremely favourable spin filtering/transport properties of 2D TMD –based spintronic devices [2,3], which opens prospective to develop a new generation of efficient and low power spintronic devices for logic and memory applications. Strategies for the large-scale synthesis of MoS2 have been recently developed at MDM [4], and their integration with magnetic thin films is currently under study. IMM Unit of Agrate Brianza is also involved in the development of materials and systems for advanced magnetic memory devices such as the racetrack memory [5]. The viability of the racetrack memory relies on the on the possibility to simultaneously write/shift/store/read domain walls (DWs) in magnetic nanowires. In this context, IMM Agrate is mainly involved in materials characterization, also following magnetic anisotropies engineering [6,7,8,9,10].
PROJECTS
SPAM3 “Spin Polarized Advanced Materials for Magnetic Memories” (01/02/09 - 31/01/12)
MAGWIRE "Magnetic Nanowires for High Density Non Volatile Memories" (Fp7 ICT Collaborative Project, 01/10/10 - 30/09/13)
FIRB Project RBAP115AYN “Oxides at the nanoscale: multifunctionality and applications” (22/02/2012 - 22/02/2016)