Oxide materials which exhibit both ferroelectricity and ferromagnetism are of great interest for sensors and memory applications. Layered bismuth titanates with an Aurivillius structure, (BiFeO3)nBi4Ti3O12, can possess ferroelectric and ferromagnetic order parameters simultaneously. It has recently been demonstrated that one such example, Bi5Fe0.5Co0.5Ti3O15,where n = 1 with half the Fe 3+ site...

The ideal strength of a material is the stress at which the lattice itself becomes unstable and, hence, sets a firm upper bound on the mechanical strength the material can have. The present paper includes an ab-initio calculation of the ideal shear strength of Fe. It is, to our knowledge, the first such computation for any ferromagnetic material. The paper also elaborates on our earlier calcula...

This paper describes a simple method for the microfabrication of mechanically compliant, magnetically-responsive microstructures. These microstructures were fabricated in one step by using a ferromagnetic photoresist, which, in turn, was prepared by suspending nickel nanospheres in a negative photosensitive epoxy (SU8). The nominal diameter of the nickel nanospheres was 80–150 nm, that is, much...

There has been considerable interest in spin-orbit torques for the purpose of manipulating the magnetization of ferromagnetic elements for spintronic technologies. Spin-orbit torques are derived from spin currents created from charge currents in materials with significant spin-orbit coupling that propagate into an adjacent ferromagnetic material. A key challenge is to identify materials that ex...

The influence of the grain boundary (GB) specific area s GB on the appearance of ferromagnetism in Fe-doped ZnO has been analysed. A review of numerous research contributions from the literature on the origin of the ferromagnetic behaviour of Fe-doped ZnO is given. An empirical correlation has been found that the value of the specific grain boundary area s GB is the main factor controlling such...

Magnetization switching at the interface between ferromagnetic and paramagnetic metals, controlled by current-induced torques, could be exploited in magnetic memory technologies. Compelling questions arise regarding the role played in the switching by the spin Hall effect in the paramagnet and by the spin-orbit torque originating from the broken inversion symmetry at the interface. Of particula...

A process for electrodepositing PdNi alloys and subsequent characterisation studies are reported. PdNi alloys are deposited on 0.019-0.021 Ω.cm and 1-2 Ω.cm ntype Silicon from a bath of Pd-ethylenediamine dichloride and Ni sulphate. The deposited films form excellent Schottky barriers on 1-2 Ω.cm Si with leakage currents of the order of μA/cm and forward current higher than the reverse current ...

A semiconductor/metal nanocomposite is composed of a porosified silicon wafer and embedded ferromagnetic nanostructures. The obtained hybrid system possesses the electronic properties of silicon together with the magnetic properties of the incorporated ferromagnetic metal. On the one hand, a transition metal is electrochemically deposited from a metal salt solution into the nanostructured silic...