Research

Fascinating phenomena occur in magnets as the lateral dimensions are reduced to below a few micrometres, when several magnets are placed close together in coupled arrays (such as in artificial spin ice systems) and when a given magnetic material is combined with another material that could be magnetic, ferroelectric or superconducting. Such artificial ferroic systems (for a topical review see external page here) consist of nanostructures (isolated or in coupled arrays) made from thin films or multilayers. They can be incorporated into devices that can be used for experimental measurements and also have the potential to be used in a number of applications including memory, sensors and actuators.

We design and manufacture such mesoscopic magnetic systems using modern nanofabrication methods in combination with thin film deposition techniques. We characterize them with large scale facility techniques available at the Paul Scherrer Institute,  making use of synchrotron X-rays, neutrons and muons, as well as employing laboratory-based methods. We study the magnetization dynamics at various timescales, observing slow dynamics associated with field or thermally active behaviour, measuring fast dynamics at microwave frequencies and exploring ultrafast dynamics at the femtosecond timescale.