France is investing more than 38M€ in Spintronics thanks to the PEPR-SPIN exploratory program! SPIN is among the 13 new exploratory programs winners of the second wave of calls for projects Priority Programs and Equipment for Exploratory Research (PEPR). Funded by France 2030, this action (€1 billion) aims to launch research programs in emerging scientific […]

Magnetic Random Access Memory recently started to be commercialized by all main microelectronics factories. In MRAM, the information is coded via parallel or antiparallel magnetic configurations to represent ones and zeroes. The technology is intrinsically nonvolatile, meaning it can keep information without being electrically powered. However, nonvolatility often comes with a trade-off between the information […]

Neuromorphic computing is a bio-inspired technology which aims at mimicking the brain working principles. It can be used for fast and energy-efficient applications through the implementation of networks of artificial neurons and synapses. Artificial synapses are implemented as electronic components called memristors. These are non-volatile memory devices whose resistance can take several intermediate values between […]

The PTA, Upstream Technological Platform, is a 1000 class clean room resulting from the pooling of  technical and human resources of IRIG (Institut de recherche interdisciplinaire du CEA Grenoble) and LTM (Laboratoire des Technologies de la Microélectronique du CNRS, UJF et INP). The clean room extends over 700 m2, 350 m² on CEA site and 350 m² in the Grenoble INP […]

Magnetic spintronic memory called STT-MRAM have recently entered in volume production at major microelectronic foundries. The research in this area is now focused on preparing the future memory generations with higher capacity, higher speed, lower power consumption, wider range of operating temperature. To conduct this type of research, it is important to be able to […]

This work reports the development of perpendicular magnetic tunnel junctions incorporating a stack of Tb/Co nanolayers whose magnetization can be all-optically controlled via helicity-independent single-shot switching. Toggling of the magnetization of the Tb/Co electrode was achieved using either 60 femtosecond-long or 5 picosecond-long laser pulses, with incident fluences down to 3.5 mJ/cm2. Ever since the […]

We propose an original concept of spintronic memristor based on the angular variation of the tunnel magnetoresistance (TMR) of a nanopillar comprising several magnetic layers. We have experimentally developed the appropriate magnetic free layer and integrated it in a full nanosized magnetic tunnel junction pillar. In parallel, we developed a model describing the magnetization dynamics […]

Numerous studies investigated the use of synthetic membranes for photonic or biomedical applications. We report here on a recent type of biocompatible magnetically actuated membranes, partly originating from studies on magnetic particles for biology, consisting of PDMS/Au bilayers with embedded arrays of micrometric magnetic pillars. Flat at zero field, concave in an applied magnetic field, […]

Measured switching diagrams of perpendicular magnetic tunnel junctions exhibit unexpected behavior at high voltages associated with significant heating of the storage layer. The boundaries deviate from the critical lines corresponding to the coercive field, which contrasts with the theoretically predicted behavior of a standard macrospin-based model. In this paper, we are proposing a modified model […]

We report the observation of spin-to-charge current conversion in strained mercury telluride at room temperature, using spin pumping experiments. We show that a HgCdTe barrier can be used to protect the HgTe from direct contact with the ferromagnet, leading to very high conversion rates. Conventional spintronics is based upon the use of magnetic materials to […]