Executive Summary : | Antiferromagnets, which were once considered useless for electron spin-based electronics, have gained significant attention in recent years. PI has demonstrated that antiferromagnetically coupled synthetic nanomagnets can be highly stable at low dimensions, leading to ultra high-density non-volatile information storage and logic systems. Their work on energy-efficient electric-field induced magnetization switching in multiferroics has gained global attention. The use of antiferromagnetically coupled nanomagnets in multiferroics can revolutionize the development of ultra-low-energy area-efficient and ultrafast spintronics. Spintronics has the potential to replace current transistor-based technology in future energy-efficient information processing systems. The 2007 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Albert Fert and Peter Grunberg for their discovery of Giant Magneto-Resistance (GMR). The industry is also developing spintronic devices for various applications, such as instant turn-on computers, highly-dense memories, and the replacement of all types of memories in the memory hierarchy in a single chip. PI has been a proponent of energy-efficient nanoelectronics, showing that electric field-induced magnetization switching in strain-mediated piezoelectric-magnetostrictive multiferroic composites can be very energy-efficient. The proposed synthetic antiferromagnet-based multiferroic devices will be experimentally demonstrated with theory, simulations, and analysis of magnetization dynamics using the stochastic Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert equation, ensuring successful magnetization switching probability close to 100% for technological applications. |