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Chapter – 6 ENGINEERING MATERIALS

Session 2 : Multiferroics, Magneto Resistive Materials, Introduction to Spintronics

Magnetic Materials

Materials respond differently to the force of a magnetic field. A magnet will strongly attract
ferromagnetic materials, weakly attract paramagnetic materials, and weakly repel diamagnetic
materials. The orientation of the spin of the electrons in an atom, the orientation of the atoms in a
molecule or alloy, and the ability of domains of atoms or molecules to line up are the factors that
determine how a material responds to a magnetic field. The following table gives comparison
between the magnetic materials –

PROPERTIES FERROMAGNETIC PARAMAGNETIC DIAMAGNETIC

MATERIALS MATERIALS

State They are solid. They can be solid, They can be solid,
liquid or gas. liquid or gas.
Effect of Strongly attracted by a Weakly attracted by a Weakly repelled by a
Magnet magnet. magnet. magnet.

Behavior under tend to move from tend to move from low tend to move from high
non-uniform low to high field to high field region. to low region.
field region.

Behavior under They preserve the They do not preserve They do not preserve
external field magnetic properties the magnetic properties the magnetic properties
after the external field once the external field is once the external field
is removed. removed. is removed.
Effect of Above curie point, it With the rise of No effect.
Temperature becomes a temperature, it becomes
paramagnetic. a diamagnetic.

Permeability Very high Little greater than unity Little less than unity

Susceptibility Very high and Little greater than unity Little less than unity
positive and positive and negative
Examples Iron, Nickel, Cobalt Lithium, Tantalum, Copper, Silver, Gold
Magnesium

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Dielectric Materials

A dielectric material is a type of insulator which becomes polarized when it comes in contact
with an electrical field.
Such materials are used in many places such as in capacitors and radios, as well as
transmission lines for radio frequency.
It can be used to store energy too, if it is configured properly.
Most of these materials are solid in nature, but some fluids and gasses also exhibit dielectric
properties.
An example of such a gas is dry air, while examples of solid dielectrics include mica, ceramic,
plastics and glass.

Polar Molecules:

Polar Molecules are those type of dielectric positive and negative charges are separated.
This is because they all are asymmetric in shape.
Examples: H2O, CO2, NO2 etc.
In absence of electric field, electric dipole moment of these molecules in a random direction.
This is why the average dipole moment is zero.
If the external electric field is present, the molecules assemble in the same direction as the
electric field.

Non-Polar Molecule:

In non-polar molecules, the centre of positive charge and negative coincide.

The molecule then has no permanent (or intrinsic) dipole moment. Examples: O2, N2, H2 etc.

Electric Polarization

In an external electric field, centres of positively charged nucleus and negatively charged
electron cloud of an atom undergo a small displacement within the dimension of an atom.
Thus atomic dipole is formed. This is called electric polarization.
Almost all dielectrics show electric polarization.

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Capacitors:
Capacitors store energy as a result of their ability to store charge with the amount of charge stored
on a capacitor depending on the voltage, V applied across its plates, and the greater the voltage,
the more charge will be stored by the capacitor as: Q ∝ V .
The constant of proportionality is known as capacitance (C) and is given by -
Q
C=
V
where C is capacitance in farad (F),
Q is electric charge stored on capacitor in coulombs (C),
V is voltage between capacitor plates in volts (V)

A
Capacitance of a capacitor is also given by - C = ε×
d
where C is the capacitance of the capacitor, in farad (F)
ε is the permittivity of the capacitor's dialectic material, in farad per meter (F/m)
A is the area of the capacitor's plate in square meters (m 2 )
d is the distance between the capacitor's plates, in meters (m)

Multi-ferroics

Multiferroics are defined as materials that exhibit more than one of the primary Ferroics
properties:

• Ferromagnetism - a magnetization that is switchable by an applied magnetic field,

• Ferro electricity - an electric polarization that is switchable by an applied electric field, and
• Ferroelasticity - a deformation that is switchable by an applied stress,

Multiferroics can be used in applications as actuators, switches, magnetic field sensors or new
types of electronic memory devices.

TYPE I MULTIFERROIC TYPE II MULTIFERROIC

Type I Multiferroics are the materials in which
the Ferro electricity and magnetization occur
at different temperatures and arise from
different mechanisms.
The structural distortion which gives rise to
Ferro electricity occurs at high temperature
and the magnetic ordering which is usually
anti-ferromagnetic sets in lower temperature.
e.g. BeFO3
Type II Multiferroics are the materials in
which the magnetic ordering breaks the
inversion symmetry and directly causes the
Ferro electricity.
In this case, ordering temperature for the two
phenomena are identical.
e.g. TbMn2O5

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Multiferroics are used in –

• Electric field control of magnetism

• Radio and high frequency devices
• Cosmology and particle physics
• Spintronics devices that include spin-based transistors
• Information storage devices such as magnetic tape
• Quantum electromagnets

Magneto resistive Materials

Magneto resistance is the tendency of a material (preferably ferromagnetic) to change the value
of its electrical resistance in an externally-applied magnetic field.

Giant Magneto resistance (GMR)

Giant Magneto resistance (GMR) is a quantum mechanical magneto resistance effect observed
in multilayers composed of alternating ferromagnetic and non-magnetic conductive layers.

The effect is observed as a significant change in the electrical resistance depending on whether
the magnetization of adjacent ferromagnetic layers is in a parallel or an antiparallel alignment. The
overall resistance is relatively low for parallel alignment and relatively high for antiparallel
alignment. The magnetization direction can be controlled, for example, by applying an external
magnetic field. The effect is based on the dependence of electron scattering on the spin
orientation.

The main application of GMR is magnetic field sensors, which are used to read data in hard disk
drives, biosensors, microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) and other devices. GMR multilayer
structures are also used in magneto resistive random-access memory (MRAM) as cells that store
one bit of information.

Colossal magneto resistance (CMR)

Colossal magneto resistance (CMR) is a property of some materials, that enables them to
dramatically change their electrical resistance in the presence of a magnetic field.

The magneto resistance of conventional materials enables changes in resistance of up to 5%, but
materials featuring CMR may demonstrate resistance changes by orders of magnitude.

This technology may find uses in disk read-and-write heads, allowing for increases in hard disk
drive data density.

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Introduction to Spintronics

Spintronics is obtained by combining two words - Spin and Electronics.

Spintronics is an emerging field that uses electron’s spin to carry information instead of its
charge.
Spin of an electron is an effect that gives a charged electron
a property of tiny magnet.
This tiny magnet has north pole and south pole like large
magnets.
When this tiny magnet comes in contact with other magnet,
opposite poles attract each other and equal poles repel each
other.
Direction of spin can be used to indicate 0 or 1 to store the
information.

Spintronics or spin electronics is the study of the role played by the spin of an electron in the solid
state physics and other devices that exploit spin properties. Spintronics is also known as spin
electronics is the study of the intrinsic spin of the electrons and its associated magnetic moment, in
addition to fundamental electronic charge in solid state devices.

For example, spin transport and spin relaxation in semiconductors and metals are important solid
state physics issues which are included in the fundamental research along with new technology
being implemented in the electronic storage technology.

Spintronics helped in creating a prototype device which used in industry as a read head and a
memory-storage cell is the giant-magneto resistive (GMR) sandwich structure which consists of
alternating ferromagnetic and nonmagnetic metal layers. Depending on the relative orientation of
the magnetizations in the magnetic layers, the device resistance changes from small (parallel
magnetizations) to large (antiparallel magnetizations).

This change in resistance (also called magneto resistance) is used to sense changes in magnetic
fields. Electron spin can be identified as a magnetic field having one of two positions, known as
up and down. This gives an extra two binary states to the conventional high and low logic values,
which are represented by simple currents. When the spin state is added to the mix, a bit can have
four possible states, which can be called as up-high, up-low, down-high and down- low. These
four states represent quantum bits or qubits

Applications of Spintronics

Spintronics devices are used in the field of mass-storage devices. It is used to compress
massive amounts of data into a small area, as an instance, approximately one trillion bits per
square inch (1.5 Gbit/mm²) or roughly 1 TB data can be stored on a single sided 3.5″ diameter
disc.
Spintronics is also used in the medical field to detect cancer.
Spintronics technology in general holds promises for digital electronics. It has been tested in
mass-storage components namely hard drives.

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