Research: Magnetics

Research Summary and Principle Aims

Within the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, magnetics research is dedicated to the growth, characterisation, modelling and application of magnetic materials. Subtle but crucial interactions that occur on the nanometre scale are under investigation by both experiment and micromagnetic modelling, and have potential exploitation in soft and hard magnetic materials, sensors and actuators, data storage and logic. There are also very strong links with industry worldwide.

View the Centre for Advanced Magnetic Materials and Devices

Selected Projects

• Domain wall dynamics and interactions in planar magnetic nanowires (EPSRC: £221,631, EPSRC Travel Grant: £9,000)
• Fluxgates for low noise/high sensitivity magnetostriction performance system suitable for use in anomaly detection (KTP: £122,030)
• Magnetic MEMS (Yorkshire Forward Proof of Concept Fund: £60,000)
• Head media optimization for perpendicular recording (Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology: £61,198)
• Exchange bias multilayers (EPSRC: £306,506)
• Magnetic thin films on nanospheres (MAFIN), http://www.mafin-project.de (EU FP6: £198,416)
• Tunable nanomagnetic oscillators (TUNAMOS), http://www.imec.be/tunamos/ (FP6: £ 166,113)
• Writer models for composite media and bit patterned recording (INSIC EHDR Programme £34,824)
• Magnetic recording head design (Seagate University Funding £16,722)
• Mobile atom traps based on domain walls in nanowires (EPSRC: £714,282)
• Organic spintronics (EPSRC feasibility grant: £77,643, British Council Young researcher exchange programme: £2250)

Key publications

• P. Desai, P. Shakya, T. Kreouzis, W.P. Gillin, N.A. Morley & M.R.J. Gibbs ‘Magnetoresistance and efficiency measurements of Alq₃ based OLEDs’, Phys Rev B 75 094423, (2007).
• M.R.J. Gibbs ‘Materials optimization for magnetic MEMS’, IEEE Trans. Mag. 43 2666-2671, (2007).
• A. Goncharov, T. Schrefl, Hrkac, J. Dean, S. Bance, D. Suess, O. Ertl, F. Dorfbauer, and J. Fidler ‘Recording simulations on graded media for area densities of up to 1 Tbit/ in²‘, APL 91 (2007) 222502.
• N. A. Morley, A. Rao, D. Dhandapani, M. R. J. Gibbs, M. Grell and T. Richardson, 'Room temperature organic spintronics' , accepted by J. Appl. Phys., 103, 07F306 (2008).
• D. A. Allwood, T. Schrefl, G. Hrkac, I. G. Hughes and C. S. Adams, ‘Mobile atom traps using magnetic nanowires’, Appl. Phys. Lett. 89 (2006) 014102.
• N. A. Morley, M. R. J. Gibbs, E. Ahmad, I. G. Will and Y. B. Xu, ‘In-plane anisotropy and magnetostriction of thin Fe films on GaInAs substrate with Cr overlayers’, Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter, 17, 46, (2005), 7253.
• D. A. Allwood, G. Xiong, C. C. Faulkner, D. Atkinson, D. Petit and R. P. Cowburn, ‘Magnetic domain-wall logic’, Science 309 (2005) 1688.
• D. Suess, M. Kirschner, T. Schrefl, J. Fidler, R.L. Stamps, J.V. Kim, 'Exchange bias of polycrystalline antiferromagnets with perfectly compensated interfaces', Phys Rev B 67 (2003) 054419.

Academic Staff

• Professor Mike Gibbs, Professor of Materials Physics, has interests in the fabrication, characterisation and exploitation of magnetic materials.
• Professor Thomas Schrefl, Professor of Functional Materials, has interests in materials and device modelling using finite element and fast boundary element methods.
• Professor Emeritus Hywel Davies has interests in bulk hard and soft magnetic materials.
• Dr Dan Allwood, EPSRC Advanced Research Fellow and Senior Lecturer Elect, has interests in patterned magnetic nanostructures and magneto-optics.
• Dr Nicola Morley, Lecturer in Material Physics, has interests in the understanding and development of ultrathin magnetic films to be used in magnetic sensors and novel spintronic devices.

Royal Society Research Fellow

• Dr Gino Hrkac has interests in spin torque driven magnetic nano-oscillators.

PDRAs

• Dr Alexander Goncharov has interests in simulation of magnetic recording systems and algorithm development.
• Dr Julian Dean has interests in magnetic MEMS structures, recording physics, and exchange bias.
• Dr Tom Hayward has interests in magnetic nanowires for atom trapping.
• Dr Matt Bryan has interests in developing sensors for magnetic nanowires.

Postgraduate Students

Current

• Athar Javed has interests in the fabrication and characterisation of magnetostrictive Fe-based thin films.
• Norlaily Mohd Saiden has interests in RE:Fe:B permanent magnets.
• Asif Bashir has interests in microwaves assisted magnetic recording.

Writing up

• Swaraj Basu has interests in domain wall studies.
• Dhanalakshmi Dhandapani has interests in the fabrication and characterisation of organic spintronic devices.
• Noor Mateen has interests in magnetic force microscopy (MFM).
• Simon Rigby has interests in the fabrication and characterisation of Fe-based thin films for sensors.

Associated Centres

Sheffield Centre for Advanced Magnetic Materials and Devices

Modelling Materials