Manuel BIBES : Oxide spintronics
Transition metal oxides, particularly those with a perovskite structure, exhibit an extraordinary diversity of electronic and magnetic properties, often strongly tunable by external stimuli. This makes them a particularly rich playground for spintronics, which aims to exploit the electron spin to store, process and transmit information. In this seminar, I will give a broad overview of how oxides have contributed to the development of spintronics and continue to open new directions. I will first discuss manganites, whose half-metallic ferromagnetism provides highly spin-polarized currents, and multiferroic materials, which enable the control of magnetism by electric fields. I will then turn to oxide interfaces hosting two-dimensional electron gases, where strong spin-orbit coupling allows the efficient interconversion between charge and spin currents through the Edelstein effects. Finally, I will show how combining these functionalities with ferroelectricity provides a route towards nonvolatile electrical control of spin-charge interconversion, opening perspectives for ultralow-power memory and logic devices.