Three-atom magnets with strong substrate coupling: a gateway towards non-collinear spin processing
Abstract
A cluster composed of a few magnetic atoms assembled on the surface of a nonmagnetic substrate is one suitable realization of a bit for future concepts of spin-based information technology. The prevalent approach to achieve magnetic stability of the bit is decoupling the cluster spin from substrate conduction electrons in order to suppress spin-flips destabilizing the bit. However, this route entails less flexibility in tailoring the coupling between the bits which is ultimately needed for spin-processing. Here, we show using a spin-resolved scanning tunneling microscope, that we can write, read, and store spin information for hours in clusters of only three atoms strongly coupled to a substrate featuring a cloud of non-collinearly polarized host atoms, a so called non-collinear giant moment cluster (GMC). The GMC can be driven into a Kondo screened state by simply moving one of its atoms to a different site. Owing to the exceptional atomic tunability of the non-collinear substrate mediated Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction, novel concepts of spin-based information technology get within reach, as we demonstrate by a logical scheme for a four-bit register.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1703.09419,
title = {Three-atom magnets with strong substrate coupling: a gateway towards non-collinear spin processing},
author = {J. Hermenau and J. Ibañez-Azpiroz and Chr. Hübner and A. Sonntag and B. Baxevanis and K. T. Ton and M. Steinbrecher and A. A. Khajetoorians and M. dos Santos Dias and S. Blügel and R. Wiesendanger and S. Lounis and J. Wiebe},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1703.09419},
year = {2017}
}