TU Delft and Federal University of São Carlos Cooperate on Spintronics

Researchers from the groups of Prof. Herre Van der Zant at TU Delft and Prof. Yara Galvão Gobato at the Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCAR) have teamed up to explore Van der Waals Heterostructures for Spintronics via a recent SPRINT grant. The goal of the collaboration has been to combine the expertise of two labs: Van der Zant group's on fabricating heterostructures involving two-dimensional magnetic materials and Galvão Gobato group's on optical measurements on semiconductors. Two-dimensional materials form an interesting class of new materials as they can be cleaved to form very thin layers, down to a monolayer (one atom) thick. The properties of such thin layers can be dramatically different from their bulk counter parts. In addition, different materials can be stacked on top of each other to form heterostructures with completely new properties. Magnetic systems are of special attention as they can be used in applications such as memories or in which the magnetic spin is used as information carrier. This application field is typically denoted with the term "Spintronics".