Voltage-controlled nanoscale reconfigurable magnonic crystal

A nanoscale reconfigurable magnonic crystal is designed using voltage-controlled perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA) in ferromagnetic-dielectric heterostructures. A periodic array of gate metallic strips 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 introduction of PMA, which can be realized experimentally via applying a voltage, modifies the spin-wave propagation and leads to the formation of band gaps in the spin-wave spectrum. The band gaps can be controlled, i.e., it is possible to switch band gaps on and off within a few tens of nanoseconds. The width and the center frequency of the band gaps are defined by the applied voltage. Finally, it is shown that the introduction of PMA to selected, rather than to all gate strips allows for a predefined modification of the band-gap spectra. The proposed voltage-controlled reconfigurable magnonic crystal opens a way to low power consumption magnonic applications.