Magnetologic with alpha-MnAs thin films

Taking advantage of the spin information in present day computing is expected to yield an enormous increase in efficiency. A promising ferromagnetic material compatible with semiconductors for room temperature applications is MnAs. By sensitive cantilever beam magnetometry, we discovered that alpha-...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Physical review letters 2003-10, Vol.91 (14), p.147203-147203
Main Authors: Pampuch, C, Das, A K, Ney, A, Däweritz, L, Koch, R, Ploog, K H
Format: Article
Language:English
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Summary:Taking advantage of the spin information in present day computing is expected to yield an enormous increase in efficiency. A promising ferromagnetic material compatible with semiconductors for room temperature applications is MnAs. By sensitive cantilever beam magnetometry, we discovered that alpha-MnAs films on GaAs(001) exhibit an additional small out-of-plane component of the magnetization which is magnetically coupled with the dominant in-plane magnetization. We demonstrate that by regarding the two components as independent inputs, the alpha-MnAs layer can be utilized as a logic gate with nonvolatile output. The logic functionality of the layer can be preselected to be AND or OR at run time, thus offering the perspective for programmable magnetologic devices.
ISSN:0031-9007
DOI:10.1103/PhysRevLett.91.147203