Spin-waves assisted domain wall depinning

The recent discovery that propagating spin-waves (SWs) on a magnetic nanowire can move a magnetic domain wall has created new possibility to manipulate magnetizations [1]. In the recent great improvements in the fabrication of magnetic nanostructures, it is possible to use SWs to deliver signals. Many kinds of device concepts are proposed such as SW logic gate [2] and the SW bus interconnect [3].

Now we numeriacally and experimentally investigate the domain wall motions due to the propagating SWs by using depinning filed calculations and measurements. Normally, a magnetic domain wall can be trapped at the pinning sites which are from the edge roughness, grain boundary, artifical pinning center, and so on. In this point of view, the depinning field calculation is more close to the real experiment and the depinning filed measurements is a easy way to measure the domain wall motion due to SWs.


 

(a) SWs assisted domain wall motion as a fucntion of the simulation time.

(b) SEM imges for the depinning field measurement due to SWs propagation.

 

[1] Dong-Soo, Han et al., Appl. Phys. Lett. 94, (2009) 112502.

[2] R. Hertel,W.Wulfhekel, and J. Kirschner, Phys. Rev. Lett. 93, 257202 (2004).

[3] A. Khitun, D. E. Nikonov, M. Bao, K. Galatsis, and K. L. Wang, Nanotechnology 18, 465202 (2007).