Magnetic tunnel junctions (MTJs) with ferromagnetic electrodes possessing a perpendicular magnetic easy axis are of great interest as they have a potential for realizing next-generation high-density non-volatile memory and logic chips with high thermal stability and low critical current for current-induced magnetization switching. To attain perpendicular anisotropy, a number of material systems...

Frequency response analysis (FRA) is a method which is used to detect mechanical faults in transformers. The FRA response of a transformer is determined by its geometry and material properties, and it can be considered as the transformer’s fingerprint. If there are any mechanical changes in the transformer, for example if the windings are moved or distorted, its fingerprint will also be changed...

Ferroelectric and ferromagnetic materials are employed as both actuators and sensors in a wide variety of applications including fluid pumps, nanopositioning stages, sonar transducers, vibration control, ultrasonic sources, and high-speed milling. They are attractive because the resulting transducers are solid-state and often very compact. However, the coupling of field to mechanical deformatio...

Native defects in cuprous oxide Cu2O are investigated by using first-principles calculations based on density-functional theory. Considering the formation of copper and oxygen vacancies, antisites and interstitials, and a copper split-vacancy complex defect, we analyze the electronic structure and calculate their respective formation energies as a function of the change in Fermi level under bot...

A domain is a region in a ferromagnetic material with the magnetization along a given direction. A magnetic material contains many domains with different magnetizations pointing in different directions in order to minimize the total magnetostatic energy. Regions with different orientations of their magnetization can be close to one another albeit with a boundary called a domain wall (containing...

In the last years a lot of effort has been devoted to a search for hybrid ferromagnet–semiconductor structures in aim of novel information storage and spin electronics applications. Nanocomposites with ferromagnetic above room temperature MnAs nanoclusters, embedded in GaAs matrix (MnAs/GaAs), are promising candidates for this type of material (e.g. [1–3]). Recently, it has been reported that t...

Large negative magnetoresistance ~MR! observed in transport measurements of hcp Co films with stripe domains were recently reported and interpreted in terms of domain-wall ~DW! scattering mechanism. Here detailed MR measurements, magnetic force microscopy, and micromagnetic calculations are combined to elucidate the origin of MR in this material. The large negative room-temperature MR reported ...

High density magnetic domain wall gratings are imprinted in ferromagnetic-antiferromagnetic thin films by local ion irradiation by which alternating head-to-tail-to-head-to-tail and head-to-head-to-tail-to-tail spatially overlapping domain wall networks are formed. Unique magnetic domain processes result from the interaction of anchored domain walls. Non-linear magnetization response is introdu...