Voltage-Controlled Nano-Scale Reconfigurable Magnonic Crystal

Abstract: A nano-scale reconfigurable magnonic crystal is designed using voltage-controlled perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA) in ferromagnetic-dielectric hetero-structures. A periodic array of gate metallic stripes is placed on top of a MgO/Co structure in order to apply a periodic electric field and to modify the PMA in Co. It is numerically demonstrated that the application of the voltage to the gate stripes modifies the spin-wave propagation and leads to the formation of band gaps in the spin-wave spectrum. The band gaps are dynamically controllable, i.e. it is possible to switch band gaps on and off within a few nanoseconds. The width and the center frequency of the band gaps is defined by the applied voltage. At last, it is shown that the application of the voltage to selected, rather than to all gate stripes allows for a pre-defined modification of the band gap spectra. The proposed voltage-controlled reconfigurable magnonic crystal opens a new way to low power consumption magnonic applications.