Electric-Field Control of Magnetic Domain Wall Motion in Ferromagnetic-Ferroelectric Heterostructures

Prof. Sebastiaan Van Dijken (born 1973) defended his doctorate at University of Twente in the Netherlands in 2000. After that he worked as a researcher at the IBM's Almaden Research Center in San Jose, U.S., at Trinity College in Ireland and at the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland in its nanotechnologies and microsystems unit.
In these research institutes, his research focused on the effects of electronic spin phenomena on materials' magnetic and electrical properties. Van Dijken, moreover, developed equipment for these investigations.
In 2008, Sebastiaan van Dijken was appointed the Professor of Applied Physics at Aalto University. At Aalto University, he founded the nanomagnetism and spintronics techniques research group. The group has especially investigated nanomaterials.
Their most recent breakthrough is an important observation about the interaction of ferromagnetic and ferroelectric materials in nanostructures. The result provides a new possibility to control magnetic properties of materials, and the observation also has important theoretical significance in understanding the ferromagnetic and electric properties of materials.
Sebastiaan van Dijken received in 2012 a notable grant from the European Research Council (ERC) for the investigation of these phenomena. Professor Dijken has published 79 articles in international papers and participated in making three study books.