Equipment

Team members have access to a large variety of state of the art equipments present at Institut Jean Lamour.

Some of these equipments are part of Institut Jean Lamour’s competence centers.

All
Growth
Magnetometers
Electronics
Optics
Dynamics

Quaternary MBE

The quaternary MBE system is a UHV chamber dedicated to the epitaxial growth of model thin films. This chamber is equipped with 6 Knudsen cells and 3 electron guns with 6 crucibles each, leading to 24 different materials that can be evaporated (unique in the world). Ternary and quaternary alloys and compounds are routinely epitaxially grown with accuracy on the stoichiometry better than 1%.

Transport measurement setup

Rare Earth MBE

The Rare Earth MBE is an UHV chamber especially dedicated to the epitaxial growth of Rare Earth based systems (thin films, superlattices, nanostructures...)

Equipped with 6 Knudsen cells and three electron guns, one can synthetize various high quality systems, including and/or combining pure RE,

RE intermetallics (magnetostrictive REFe2, ZMF SmGdAl2...), RE oxides (magnetic semiconductor EuO...).

Oxides MBE

The oxide MBE is an UHV chamber dedicated to the epitaxial growth of magnetic oxides in thin films or superlattices. It is equipped with 8 Knudsen cells and one electron gun (4 crucibles). A mixture of oxygen and ozone provides high oxidizing conditions, which enables the growth of high quality oxide systems at low pressure.

A very good control of growth process and stoechiometry is thus achieved, both for co-deposition and digital growth (shutter controled atomic layer by layer).

UHV PVD Alliance Concept

This PVD connected to theTUBE Daum can deposit in UHV conditions from up to 10 different targets.

Metallic, magnetic alloys, semiconductors, superconductors and insulators thin films can be deposited and combined into complex architectures presenting AMR, GMR or TMR effects.

PVD AJA

PVD 8

The PVD8 is a Physical Vapor Deposition system, from Vinci- Technologiy, dedicated to the sputtering deposition process of materials with up to 8 sources (2 »)

Ferrimagnetic and synthetic ferrimagnetic materials have been grown in this chamber.

Pulsed Laser Deposition

Atomic Layer Deposition

CW MOKE Setup

CW laser based longitudinal and polar magneto-optical Kerr setup to probe the magnetic moment of thin films with fields up to 0.5 Tesla at room temperature.

Electronic transport under applied magnetic field

This homemade setup is dedicated to electronic transport characterization under an in-plane magnetic applied field (up to 4kOe). Four contacts can be taken with needles that allow the screening of wafers without wire-bonding.

A high-magnification zoom camera allows precisse contacting with 100µm résolution.

MFM asylum

This kind of AFM/MFM has the specificity to be able to apply a magnetic field during the imaging process. The very interesting thing about it is that it can do it in a fully automatic manner. In couples of hours you can obtain hundreds of images representing the local magnetic texture of your sample under different applied magnetic field values. In the team we have access to two of these nice guys!

MFM DI

This scanning probe microscope allows to record the surface topography of a thin film as well as its magnetic texture.

White ligth MOKE Microscope

This commercial white light MOKE microscope is sensitive to both out-of-plane or in-plane magnetization. The microscope has two coils systems to apply a magnetic field either in the plane at an arbitrary angle or out-of-plane. Moreover, home-made electronics allow for nanosecond electrical current pulsing to induce magnetization changes.

GPU micromagnetic calculations

The team is using MuMax 3 to perform micromagnetic calculations on GPU cards.

The team possesses a cluster but other facilities are also available.

Broadband FMR + out-of-plane magnetic field

Broadband FMR + in-plane magnetic field

High fluence Time Resolved MOKE

This setup allows the study of magnetization dynamics at high fluences.

Based on an 5kHz Ti:Sa amplified laser system that delivers 30 fs pulses around 800 nm, this setup enables the study of strong demagnetizations and/or magnetization reversal.

Low fluence Time Resolved MOKE

This setup allows the study of magnetization dynamics at low fluences.

Based on an 80MHz Ti:Sa laser system that delivers 75 fs pulses around 800 nm, we can induce small (lattice) temperature excursions of a few K, always remaining within the linear demagnetization regime. The high repetition rate results in a high signal-to-noise ratio.

Single-fs-shot MOKE microscope

Low temperature THz-TDS

This setup allows for Time-Domain THz Spectroscopy studies at low temperature under an in-plane field.

With this setup we mostly focus on the study of spintronic THz emitters and superconductors.

Room temperature THz-TDS

This setup allows for Time-Domain THz Spectroscopy studies at room temperature. Both the magnetic field and the sample can be rotated around the z-axis which allows for studies of in-plane anisotropies or symmetry breakings.

With this setup we study various spintronic THz emitters and their physics.

Ultrafast optics/electronics setup

This setup allows the study of spintronics at the picosecond scale.

The setup consists of a time-resolved (pump/probe) MOKE configuration with RF electrical probe access, a magneto-optical microscope and two axis magnetic field control. We are then able to excite either with femtosecond optical pulses or picosecond (THz) electrical pulses, and detect the induced magnetization dynamics.

Time Resolved MOKE Microscopy

This setup uses a femtosecond laser as the illumination source for MOKE microscopy. The result is a time-resolved MOKE microscope with few micron resolution and 100 fs time-resolution. Moreover, this setup is combined with OPAs that enable wavelength tunability from 400 nm to 1.6 um, either for the pump and/or probe beams.

SQUID

Two SQUID-VSM QD magnetometers measure small magnetic moment of liquid, bulk, thin film or powder down to 10^-10 A.m², under fields up to 7 Tesla, in a range of 2K to 1000K.

PPMSs

Three QD PPMS cryostats, with field up to 9 Tesla and temperature from 2K to 400K, provide multiple options: VSM, AC susceptibility, electrical resistance, Hall effect, FMR.

VSMs

Two vectorial VSMs and one radial VSM, with temperature from 300K up to 1200K and field up to 2.5 Tesla, are available to measure magnetic moments of bulk, thin film or powder down to 10^-8 A.m².

Brillouin light scattering

The team has access to a Brillouin light scattering setup on which an in situ applied field is available. This will allow the study of magnons in thin films and nanostructures.

Micro-Nanofabrication

UV and e-beam lithography are among the equipments hosted in the institute's clean rooms. The used processes make it possible to functionalize the materials or to reduce their lateral dimensions at the nanometric scale in order to modify their properties.

NV center

Our NV center miscroscope from the QZabre compagny allows to map magnetic fields with a resoltuion down to about 30 nm. It enables to work under a vectorial magnetic field and to perform operando measurments (e.g. injecting current or applying voltage during the recording).

The team also has full access to the Institut Jean Lamour’s shared facilities.