Antiferromagnetic spintronics: An overview and outlook

Over the past few decades, the diversified development of antiferromagnetic spintronics has made antiferromag-nets (AFMs) interesting and very useful. After tough challenges, the applications of AFMs in electronic devices have transitioned from focusing on the interface coupling features to achieving the manipulation and detection of AFMs. As AFMs are internally magnetic, taking full use of AFMs for information storage has been the main target of research. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive description of AFM spintronics applications from the interface coupling, read-out operations, and writing manipulations perspective. We examine the early use of AFMs in magnetic recordings and conventional magnetoresistive random-access memory (MRAM), and review the latest mechanisms of the manipulation and detection of AFMs. Finally, based on exchange bias (EB) ma-nipulation, a high-performance EB-MRAM is introduced as the next generation of AFM-based memories, which provides an effective method for read-out and writing of AFMs and opens a new era for AFM spintronics.

Automated summary

This paper provides a comprehensive description of antiferromagnetic spintronics applications, including interface coupling, read-out operations, and writing manipulations. It discusses the early use of antiferromagnets in magnetic recordings and MRAM, and reviews the latest mechanisms of manipulation and detection of antiferromagnets. The paper introduces a high-performance EB-MRAM as the next generation of antiferromagnet-based memories based on exchange bias manipulation.