UCLA

The semiconductor industry is fast approaching the fundamental scaling limit of conventional complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) devices. This has spurred numerous exploratory researches in the last decade, on technologies that can sustain Moore's law and eventually replace CMOS based devices. One such magnonics based, beyond CMOS device is called the spin wave device. A spin wave device is a low power magnetic logic device that uses a propagating wave of precessional spins, called a spin wave, to perform computations. Traditionally, spin waves have been generated using energetically inefficient, inductively coupled antennas. In order to attain atto-joule energy per operation, which is substantially lower than that of the current generation of CMOS devices, we propose and demonstrate a novel method of spin wave generation using the strain mediated magneto electric effect. We have conducted extensive experimental and numerical studies to design, engineer and fabricate such nano scale spin wave devices. These devices could in effect outperform and eventually replace the CMOS based logic devices.