From curvilinear magnetism to shapeable magnetoelectronics

I had a pleasure and honor to work with Yuri Gaididei on the topic of curvature effects in magnetism, which is now emerged in a new research field known as curvilinear magnetism. Our cooperation started back in 2013 with a visit of Prof. Gaididei and his team to the Leibniz Institute for Solid State and Materials Research Dresden. The outcome of numerous discussions, which we had during that visit, was the foundational work on the description of curvature effects in magnetic thin films [1]. This work pushed the understanding of the experimental data to the qualitatively new level and predicted numerous effects stemming from the geometry induced anisotropic and chiral interactions. In my talk, I will discuss the experimental realisations of geometrically curved low-dimensional architectures and their characterization, which among others resulted in the experimental confirmation of the geometrically induced chiral effects [2] predicted by Yuri Gaididei. Geometrically curved magnetic thin films are interesting not only fundamentally. They are the key component of mechanically flexible magnetic field sensors. I will briefly outline our activities on the so-called shapeable magnetoelectronics, which includes flexible, stretchable and printable magnetic field sensors for the realisation of human-machine interfaces [3,4], interactive electronics for virtual [5] and augmented [6] reality applications and soft robotics [7] to mention just a few. The presence of the geometrical curvature in a magnetic thin film influences pinning of magnetic domain walls and in this respect it affects the sensitivity of mechanically flexible magnetic field sensors. This is an intimate link between the fundamental topic of curvilinear magnetism and application-oriented activities on shapeable magnetoelectornics. This link will be discussed in the presentation as well.

[1] Y. Gaididei et al., “Curvature Effects in Thin Magnetic Shells”, Physical Review Letters 112, 257203 (2014).
[2] O. Volkov et al., “Experimental observation of exchange-driven chiral effects in curvilinear magnetism”, Physical Review Letters 123, 077201 (2019).
[3] P. Makushko et al., “Flexible Magnetoreceptor with Tunable Intrinsic Logic for On-Skin Skin Touchless Human-Machine Interfaces”, Advanced Functional Materials 31, 2101089 (2021).
[4] J. Ge et al., “A bimodal soft electronic skin for tactile and touchless interaction in real time”, Nature Communications 10, 4405 (2019).
[5] G. S. Canon Bermudez et al., “Electronic-skin compasses for geomagnetic field driven artificial magnetoception and interactive electronics”, Nature Electronics 1, 589 (2018).
[6] G. S. Canon Bermudez et al., “Magnetosensitive e-skins with directional perception for augmented reality”, Science Advances 4, eaao2623 (2018).
[7] M. Ha et al., “Reconfigurable Magnetic Origami Actuators with On-Board Sensing for Guided Assembly”, Advanced Materials 33, 2008751 (2021).