SPIN

Molecular dynamics (MD) is a technique of atomistic simulation which has facilitated scientific discovery of interactions among particles since its advent in the late 1950s. Its merit lies in incorporating statistical mechanics to allow for examination of varying atomic configurations at finite temperatures. Its contributions to materials science from modeling pure metal properties to designing nanowires is also remarkable. This review paper focuses on the progress of MD in understanding the behavior of iron — in pure metal form, in alloys, and in composite nanomaterials. It also discusses the interatomic potentials and the integration algorithms used for simulating iron in the literature. Furthermore, it reveals the current progress of MD in simulating iron by exhibiting some results in the literature. Finally, the review paper briefly mentions the development of the hardware and software tools for such large-scale computations.

An all-oxide granular film (GF) with a sandwich structure containing cobalt metal nanoparticles embedded in ZnO is fabricated by magnetron sputtering. Large and small Co particles can be obtained simultaneously in a sample by depositing nanostructured ZnO–Co layers at high and low temperatures, respectively. The two ZnO–Co layers couple with each other through a ZnO spacer layer, whose thickness tunes the strength of the coupling. Both the magnetic properties and the magnetoresistance (MR) of the samples depend on the sandwich structure. Magnetic interactions can be transferred through the polycrystalline pure ZnO spacer layer even when the layer is as thick as 40nm due to the long spin coherence length. An analysis of the data found that the spin coherence length was greater than $\sim$17nm at room temperature (RT) in a polycrystalline film with very small grains. Tuning the resistance of the ZnO–Co layer deposited at a low temperature by adding aluminum so that it more nearly matches the resistance of the ZnO–Co layer deposited at a high temperature, dramatically enhances the MR of the sandwich sample. This study illustrates the power of combining films containing different sizes of nanoparticles in order to optimize the MR and so make the ZnO-based films more suitable for applications in spintronics.

In femtosecond magnetism, a femtosecond laser pulse affects the spin moment only indirectly through the orbital angular momentum and the spin–orbit coupling. A long-standing puzzle is what happens if the orbital angular momentum itself is quenched. Here, we employ a four-level system to resolve this puzzle. The results show that the quenching of the orbital angular moment in the ground state has no direct relation to the spin moment change. By contrast, the orbital moment can be restored partially after the pulsed optical excitation and can affect the demagnetization. Importantly, this study confirms that the orbital moment indeed responds to the laser field faster than spin if the pulse duration is short, consistent with the recent time-resolved X-ray magnetic circular dichroism experiment. Therefore, our finding shines new light on femtosecond magnetism.

We build self-consistent spin-dependent Boltzmann equation in ferromagnetic insulator (FI) and metal layers. The effect of temperature gradient is considered. In this theoretical framework, we focus on the transport phenomena in FI/normal metal (NM) layers, including spin Seebeck effect (SSE). A temperature gradient can generate magnon current in FI layer, and it can converse to the spin current in NM layer through the interaction between magnon and electron at the interface. We also study the different factors of spin-dependent scattering at the interface, regarded as the boundary conditions. By adjusting the FI/NM interface parameters and a temperature gradient, we also obtain influence of diffusion length and $\mathrm{\Delta }T$ on the final spin currents.

The recent emergence of two-dimensional (2D) layered materials — graphene and transition metal dichalcogenides — opens a new avenue for exploring the internal quantum degrees of freedom of electrons and their potential for new electronics. Here, we provide a brief review of experimental achievements concerning electrical spin injection, spin transport, graphene nanoribbons spintronics and transition metal dichalcogenides spin and pseudospins. Future research in 2D layered materials spintronics will need to address the development of applications such as spin transistors and spin logic devices, as well as exotic physical properties including pseudospins-valley phenomena in graphene and other 2D materials.

Half-metallic Co-based full Heusler alloys have been qualified as promising functional materials in spintronic devices due to their high spin polarization. The lack of perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA) is one of the biggest obstacles restricting their application in next generation ultrahigh density storage such as magnetic random access memory (MARM). How to induce the PMA in Co-based full Heusler alloy thin films has attracted much research interest of scientists. This paper presents an overview of recent progress in this research area. We hope that this paper would provide some guidance and ideas to develop highly spin-polarized Co-based Heusler alloy thin films with PMA.

In this paper, we reported an obvious weak localization (WL) effect in perpendicular CoFeB sandwiched by Ta and MgO layers. The WL correction to the anomalous Hall effect (AHE) arises when the sheet resistance is larger than 1.5k$\mathrm{\Omega }$. Furthermore, it is found that the mechanism of AHE is strongly related to the characteristic of the granularity in the MgO/CoFeB/Ta thin films. Both skew scattering and side jump mechanisms will give comparable contribution in the high disorder regime.

Laser-induced magnetization dynamics in Gd${}_{0.25}$Fe${}_{0.6}$Co${}_{0.15}$ (GdFeCo) film was investigated by time-resolved magneto-optical effect. After an ultrafast demagnetization and a magnetization recovery process, a second slower drop from several picoseconds (ps) to 200ps was observed. Previous report explained it as the demagnetization of Gd sublattice. However, when timescale extended up to 5 nanosecond (ns), we identified it as the part of an oscillated magnetization precession. It presents the change of magnetization orientation rather than the change of magnetization amplitude. Our results reveal that the low thermal diffusion coefficient of GdFeCo film plays an important role in the laser-induced magnetization dynamics of GdFeCo film.