Applied Spintronics Group

The Applied Spintronics Group is one of the newest groups at the Physics Department. It was originally founded at the Royal Institute of Technology in Kista-Stockholm but with the recent recruitment of Prof. Johan Åkerman to the department, the group has now moved over to Gothenburg. The recruitment of Prof. Åkerman is in line with a strategy to forge a stronger collaboration with Chalmers University of Technology. Since expertise in spintronics and magnetism is largely missing at Chalmers, The Applied Spintronics Group has the ambition to form a new Applied Spintronics Institute where its expertise in spintronics and nanomagnetism can be combined with the cutting edge nanofabrication capabilities at Chalmers. Strong collaborations have already formed within the field of Magnetoplasmonics for example.

The group works on Spintronics, Nanomagnetism and Thin Film Magnetism, Magnetic Tunnel Junctions and MRAM, and Magnetoplasmonics, with a particular focus on so-called Spin Torque Oscillators (STOs) for microwave applications in the GHz range, with several collaborations with Swedish, EU and US industrial laboratories.

Group members include five graduate students, five postdocs, and two Master’s students. Funding comes from The Swedish Research Council (VR), The Foundation for Strategic Research (SSF), The Royal Academy of Sciences (KVA), The Knut & Alice Wallenberg Foundation (KAW), and the European Union 7^th Framework Program (EU 7FP). The yearly turnover continues to grow, in particular thanks to a recent large 4-year framework program grant from VR on STOs.