Frontier Research Institute for Interdisciplinary Sciences
Tohoku University

In order to realize a technologically-centered society that highly integrates virtual and real spaces, it is essential to develop next-generation IT-devices combining "large capacity, high speed, and low power consumption". "Spintronics" is expected as an IT-infrastructure-technology that can meet the above three conditions in response to social demands. At the present stage, magnetic information (polarity/dynamics of magnets) is mainly manipulated by means of magnetic fields or electric currents. Recently, for requirement of low power consumption, "voltage-control" of the magnetic information has attracted a great deal of attention. In particular, voltage-driven magnetioresistive random access memory (MRAM) is vigorously studied, which manipulates the magnetic information by applying a voltage. This memory device can greatly reduce energy loss associated with heat generation in a circuit, whereas there are still issues in material development, which prevents the social implementation of the voltage-driven MRAM.

Motivated by the above situation, I focus on a new-type material the so-called "topological material", and by utilizing a peculiar electronic state found on the surface of the topological materials I work on material development and application to the voltage-controlled magnetic memory. I also try to develop an "analog memory" that is an extension of the concept of the voltage-controlled magnetic memory, with the aim of applying to artificial neural networks and pseudo-quantum computing based on physical phenomena. In the future, I aim to contribute to the next-generation IoT-technology by introducing an on-chip device that combines the above memory technologies with light/thermal power generation device.