Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2011
We investigate spin wave propagation and interference in conducting ferromagnetic nanostructures for potential application in spin wave based logic circuits. The novelty of this approach is that information transmission is accomplished without charge transfer. A bit of information is encoded into the phase of spin wave propagating in a nanometer thick ferromagnetic film. A set of “AND”, “NOR”, and “NOT” logic gates can be realized in one device structure by utilizing the effect of spin wave superposition. We present experimental data on spin wave transport in 100nm CoFe films at room temperature obtained by the propagation spin wave spectroscopy technique. Spin wave transport has been studied in the frequency range from 0.5 GHz to 6.0 GHz under different configurations of the external magnetic field. Both phase and amplitude of the spin wave signal are sensitive to the external magnetic field showing 60Deg/10G and 4dB/20G modulation rates, respectively. Potentially, spin wave based logic circuits may compete with traditional electron-based ones in terms of logic functionality and power consumption. The shortcomings of the spin wave based circuits are discussed.