Lauren Riddiford, Mesoscopic Systems, ETH Zurich - Paul Scherrer Institute
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Abstract: To create novel functionality in thin film devices over the last few decades, researchers have synthesized thin film heterostructures, where interlayer coupling leads to emergent properties, or nanostructures through physical or chemical etching, where confined dimensionality alters the device response. More recently, there has been significant progress in utilizing spatially varying properties within a film plane to create optical, electronic, and magnetic metamaterials. Locally modifying properties within a single thin film can yield additional functionality not possible to create by other means. Currently, the available techniques to modify film properties on the nanometer- to micron-scale are limited to light ion beam irradiation, asymmetric growth methods, and thermal scanning-probe lithography. While laser annealing has been used, the full functionality of the technique and its technological relevance was not explored until now. Here, I will discuss the use of laser annealing to modify magnetic properties of thin films. With our technique, we can adjust magnetic anisotropy in ferromagnets and synthetic antiferromagnets with grayscale precision. Laser annealing has great promise to not only realize new magnetic devices, but to create metamaterials in a broad range of thin film systems.
Bio:
Lauren Riddiford completed her B.Sc. in Applied Physics at Columbia University in 2017. Subsequently, she received her PhD in Applied Physics from Stanford University in August 2022 under the supervision of Professor Yuri Suzuki with the support of an NSF graduate research fellowship. In her dissertation work, she revealed the origin of interfacial magnetic coupling and spin transport in thin film bilayer structures, with a particular focus on the family of spinel ferrite magnetic insulators. Lauren joined the Laboratory for Mesoscopic Systems, jointly at the Paul Scherrer Institute and ETH Zurich, as a postdoctoral researcher in October 2022. She is an ETH Zurich Postdoctoral Fellow as of May 2023.