Research Projects

The increasing use of AI and IoT is transforming daily life, but existing data storage and processing technologies are approaching their limits due to parasitic effects. The growing IT expansion is projected to consume over 20-30% of the total global energy demand by 2030. Investigating new materials and pathways for sustainable, energy-efficient, and high-speed operation is essential for next-generation data storage, communication, and advanced computing. Spin Orbitronics is an emerging technology that deals with the rich physical phenomena arising from spin-orbit coupling (SOC), a relativistic effect that translates a charge current into a transversal spin current and a local spin polarization via the spin Hall effect (SHE) or the Rashba-Edelstein effect (REE). Recently, spin-orbit torque (SOT) was employed to enable a new type of high-speed non-volatile magnetoresistive RAM, SOT-MRAM, which provides better energy efficiency and more application versatility. Engineering novel new materials and interfaces is crucial for the progress of Spin Orbitronics. The overarching scientific and technological aim of this research is to investigate technology-relevant materials with strong spin-orbit coupling, establish novel experimental techniques to study emergent phenomena in these materials, and build prototype devices based on these phenomena for the next generation of memories, such as MRAM and beyond-CMOS spin-orbit-based logic, and neuromorphic computing.