WILL GRIGGS
Ahoy!
I am a Dame Kathleen Ollerenshaw fellow in the Department of Computer Science at The University of Manchester, working in the Nano-Engineering and Spintronics Technologies research group, sometimes as part of the NeuroΣky team. I am also an ordinary member of the IoP Magnetism Group committee. My research interests include spintronics, magnonics, and skyrmionics for unconventional computing.
PhD Students
I am looking to work with skilled, motivated PhD students with a background in experimental or computational condensed matter physics, or neuromorphic computing. If this is you, please get in touch. I am currently advertising a fully-funded PhD position for UK students here.
Selected Work
W. Griggs, A. Peasey, F. Schedin, Md. S. Anwar, B. Eggert, M.-A. Mawass, F. Kronast, H. Wende, R. Bali, and T. Thomson.
We combine light ion irradiation with nanoscale lithography to generate ferromagnetic wires which are embedded within an otherwise homogeneous metamagnetic FeRh thin film. We show that it is possible to remove and recover the magnetic periodicity via temperature cycling, and explore the role of the film microstructure on the resulting magnetic domain pattern.
Encoding and multiplexing information signals in magnetic multilayers with fractional skyrmion tubes
R. Chen, Y. Li, W. Griggs, Y. Zhang, V. F. Pavlidis, and C. Moutafis.
We explore the potential of fractional skyrmion tubes (FSTs) to be used as magnetic information carriers in unconventional computing. We use micromagnetic simulations to demonstrate that it is possible to nucleate and stabilise FSTs with different depth profiles in a single interconnect device which supports automatic signal demultiplexing.
W. Griggs, B. Eggert, M. O. Liedke, M. Butterling, A. Wagner, U. Kentsch, E. Hirschmann, M. Grimes, A. J. Caruana, C. Kinane, H. Wende, R. Bali, and T. Thomson.
We demonstrate control of the magnetic ordering in FeRh with depth selectivity via irradiation with light noble gas ions, and elucidate the relationship between the type and concentration of induced defects to the observed magnetic modifications.
W. Griggs, C. Bull, C. W. Barton, R. A. Griffiths, A. J. Caruana, C. Kinane, P. Nutter, T. Thomson
We measure the depth-dependent magnetism in thermally switchable exchange springs using variable temperature polarised neutron reflectometry. In doing so, we are able to quantify the length scale over which the FePt switching field is reduced by interfacial exchange coupling with metamagnetic FeRh.
humbleBragg is a free, web-based X-Ray diffraction (XRD) simulator, with support for several common scan geometries, reciprocal space mapping, CIF import, and Crystallography Open Database lookup. Calculations can be performed for powders, single crystals, or textured samples.
M(H)ero is open-source software for magnetometry analysis with a graphical user interface. It provides instrument-agnostic tools for hysteresis loop visualisation, diamagnetic/paramagnetic background subtraction, drift correction, unit conversion, loop parameter extraction, and anisotropy analysis via the area method.