Inspin is a three year EU Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) research project, funded under FP7, the European Union's Research and Innovation funding programme. It ran from March 1, 2014 to February 28, 2017.
InSpin’s long-term vision is to develop revolutionary nano-scale insulator spintronics at room temperature. The innovation lies in the use of spin currents that in magnetic insulators are decoupled from charge currents and propagate with extremely low power dissipation. Because insulator spintronics do not contain moving charges, they transmit signals with small power losses. This may provide a disruptive technology that is spin-based, low-power and ultra-low-noise, leading to superior oscillators, logics, and random-access memory compared to those based on charge-based electronics.
Exceptionally, four of the principal investigators in InSpin have received ERC grants during the InSpin project.
The grants are also on InSpin related or adjacent activities. Arne Brataas and Burkard Hillebrands have received European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grants, Mathias Klaeui an ERC Consolidator Grant, and Andrii Chumak an ERC Starting Grant. The large number of grants testifies that the InSpin project continues to stay at the frontier at this field generating new ideas among the people involved and others.
Professor Arne Brataas, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, InSpin coordinator, received ERC Advanced Grant in 2015.
Professor Burkard Hillebrands, Technical University of Kaiserslautern, InSpin partner, received ERC Advanced Grant in 2016
Professor Mathias Klaeui, Johannes Gutenberg University (Mainz), InSpin partner, received ERC Starting Grant in 2008 and an ERC Proof-of-Concept Grant in 2015
Junior Professor Andrii Chumak, Technical University of Kaiserslautern, InSpin partner, received ERC Starting Grant in 2016
We asked these four expecetional researchers about their views on funding and impact of their results
Can you introduce yourself and your participation in FET and ERC funding?
AB: I am a professor and Director of Center for Quantum Spintronics at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, Norway. I was the coordinator of FP7 FET InSpin – Insulator spintronics and I have a ERC Advanced Grant “Insulatronics”. I am also a partner in Horizon 2020 FET “Transpire”.
BH: Currently, I hold the position of Full Professor of Physics at the University of Kaiserslautern in Germany. In parallel I hold the position of Scientific Director and Speaker of the Executive Board at the Leibniz Institute for Solid State and Materials Research (IFW) in Dresden, Germany. In 2016 I received an ERC Advanced Grant of the European Commission “Supercurrents of Magnon Condensates for Advanced Magnonics - SuperMagnonics”. I was also coordinator of the EU Research Training Networks „Ultrafast Magnetization Processes in Advanced Devices (ULTRASWITCH)“ (2002-2006) and „Spin Current Induced Ultrafast Switching (SPINSWITCH)“ (2006-2010) and member of several other EU projects, including, of course, the INSPIN project.
MK: I am Full Professor of Physics at Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz and I am director of the Graduate School of Excellence Materials Science in Mainz as well as the Gutenberg Council for Young Researchers. I received in 2008 a Starting Grant on Spin Currents in Magnetic Nanostructures and currently a proof-of-concept grant on magnetic sensing is running. I have been involved in a number of ITNs, FETs and NMP projects funded by the EU.
AC: I am a 35-year old experimental physicist with strong scientific interests in the fields of nano-scaled magnonics. I did my master and PhD studies in Kyiv, Ukraine under the supervision of Prof. Genadii Melkov. Afterwards I joined the group of magnetism headed by Prof. Burkard Hillebrands at the University of Kaiserslautern, Germany as a postdoctoral researcher. Since 2011 I am a principle investigator in few projects. Recently, I occupied an Assistant Professor position at the University of Kaiserslautern. I was involved in the InSpin FET project as a senior scientific staff and was responsible for few research tasks. In parallel, I have received Starting Grant “Nano-scale magnonic circuits for novel compuing systems (MagnonCircuits)” in 2016.
How did it happen, what came first and why?
AB: We succefully got the InSpin projected funded first. The writing and application processes also generated many additional ideas. I used some of the new insight, concept, and ideas beyond the InSpin project in the ERC application.
BH: The InSpin research subject lies at the core of my research interest. My group focuses on magnonic transport phenomena using Brillouin light scattering (BLS) spectroscopy and microwave techniques. BLS is extremely useful as a core investigation tool, since this technique allows to observe magnon phenomena with frequency, wavevector, spatial and phase resolution.The InSpin consortium consists of the best researchers in Europe in this field, and thus this collaboration was extremely beneficial, in particular for developing new ideas going beyond the initially agreed work programme. The new field of magnonic macroscopic quantum state phenomena, covered in my ERC grant, grew out of the ideas initially developed within InSpin.
MK: The InSpin project was a natural extension of work done within the starting grant where the focus was on spin transport in conductors. So using magnetic insulators was a next step that turned out to be extremely fruitful. The proof-of-concept grant ideas were then generated in parallel with InSpin however on a much more applied level. The work however benefitted very strongly from the combination of blue-sky high-risk/high-gain work in the starting grant, the targeted work within InSpin and the applied work in the proof-of-concept grant.
AC: Some of the InSpin problems were defined according to the results obtained earlier in the frames of another project funded by the German Research Foundation DFG (which I led together with Burkard Hillebrands). In the same way, experimental results and questions generated in the process of InSpin studies partially guided the aims of my ERC Starting Grant proposal. Some of the InSpin ideas achieved their further development in the frames of ERC, other ideas were completely new and were dictated by the fast evolution of the field. But the general motivation behind both projects is the same: Development of new computing systems based on spin waves in magnetic insulators.
How has your work differently benefited from these two schemes?
AB: Yes, both schemes have been very rewarding.The unique aspect of the FP7 FET InSpin project is the collaborative nature. In this, I imply that we regularly meet top international researchers in the same field every six month. This generates a great exchange of ideas and interest. Some of these results in some common publications, but the much more important aspect is that the interaction stimulates further results inspires by the consortium within the scope of the FET project and beyond.
The ERC Advanced Grant is also a great funding instrument. It stimulates long-term curiosity-driven research with a high risk and potential significant impact. It has enabled me to hire researchers on five-year contracts, bring international excellence, continuity, stability, and high-risk potential to the project.
BH: Same arguments as expressed by Arne Brataas.
MK: I agree that the combination of large-scale funding provided for a single PI within the ERC funding instruments nicely complements the strongly networked activities within the FET project. In particular it helped to bounce one’s ideas from the ERC projects also off the InSpin partners and get valuable feedback as the people involved are all excellent scientists.
AC: I think the largest benefit from FET for me personally was the networking. Since all the principle investigators in the InSpin FET project are top-level pioneers in the field, it was my chance to get better contact to them and to share/discuss ideas. Since FET rules actively stimulate doing research jointly and assume quite often meetings of all partners together, the networking was very efficient. ERC scheme is different and, in some sense, it is a door to my independent carrier. With the help of ERC I managed to establish my own laboratory and collected a team of few excellent PhD students and a PostDoc.
What do you think are the most motivating elements from FET as a researcher?
AB: The most motivating aspect is the interaction with the other top international researchers in the consortium.
BH: Most important is the intense collaboration with the project partners and the joint work on a common, top-level research subject.
MK: The interaction is crucial, however it helps to have a good balance of targeted work and the freedom to develop exciting novel ideas.
AC: I completely agree with Arne Brataas and Burkard Hillebrands.
What are the key achievements you are most proud of in this EC funded work?
AB: FET is a high-risk project. I am proud that we managed to demonstrate the feasibility of insulator spintronics and that the project generated a plethora of new ideas and concepts that also got materialized into four ERC projects.
BH: Same arguments as expressed by Arne Brataas.
MK: Showing that insulator spintronics is fundamentally feasible was very rewarding. In particular correlating the materials and in particular interface properties with the spin current transport was a nice result that would have otherwise probably not been achieved.
AC: In my opinion, there were many really impressive discoveries made by all partners in InSpin. To speak about research directions in which I was involved, I would mention the experimental observation (in parallel with another group in USA) that a thermal gradient can generate coherent spin waves. This phenomenon was not foreseen in the original InSpin proposal. In addition, we have demonstrated first functioning prototype of spin-wave majority gate, a very promising logic element for future magnonic devices.
And how will this work change the life of European citizens?
AB: If insulator spintronics continues to develop, it can enable spin torque oscillators, spin logic, MRAM, and interconnects with ultra-low loss. In this way, insulator spintronics can become a possible key driver in the Green IT revolution. Insulator spintronics can lead to dramatically increased switching speeds, higher efficiencies and longer lifetimes for mobile applications. Mobile applications are at the core of the modern lifestyle.
BH: Magnonics has a chance to develop into a step-changing new technology, based on the potential to use wave quanta as representation of information, to miniaturize down to the atomic scale, to possess inherent nonlinear functionalities needed for information processing, and to have minimum power consumption. Although this field is still in an infant state, no fundamental road blockers have been identified so far which might inhibit future applications.
MK: I concur with the other opinions about the FET project. For the ERC proof-of-concept grant we work very closely with a company that plans to commercialize our ideas. So hopefully in 2-3 years the developed concepts will make an impact both economically but also in improving the lives by providing low power ICT devices.
AC: The final aim of this research direction is the development of a new computing system. In the simplest words, we are searching for a new processor for smartphones which will process data faster and which European citizens will not have to charge so often. Obviously, it is a very far-reaching and high-risk aim. However, if this technology will be created and we have added few stones to this road, the life of the citizens will be very changed substantially.
But at this point in time, I still consider ourselves to be working in an academia domain. It means that our studies do not really change the life of the citizens, but instead they ensure a constant and stable progress. Again in simplest words, if mankind wants to keep evolving, there should be universities in which people do research and transfer knowledge from one generation to another. And I am really happy that such great programs as FET and ERC strongly support this process.