Director's Message

I want to take this opportunity to wish each and every member of the TANMS family a Happy New Year as we start our new year! During 2015 we had many exciting advances achieved by our team of researchers and students on all three testbeds (i.e. memory, antenna, and motor), which ultimately led to a successful renewal of our center. In addition to TANMS entering its 4th year, the National Science Foundation’s Engineering Research Center (ERC) program passed a major milestone – its 30th anniversary. A celebration was held on Capitol Hill in November with participation by all existing 19 ERC centers. TANMS representation at this historic event included Greg Carman (Director), Dominic Labonowski (SLC President), Shaunna Robbenolt (Perfect Pitch winner), and John Gianvittorio (IAB Chair). In addition to the celebration, the TANMS team met with representatives from three California Congressional offices to expand general longer-term interest in controlling magnetism in the small scale.

Now that TANMS has completed its third year, many of our students are beginning to graduate and move on to new and important positions throughout the world. I want to wish all of these graduates the best of luck and encourage them to remain connected with their TANMS family. I extend appreciation for all of their hard work conducted in establishing the TANMS center and praise for the impact they will have on our society as they move through their respective careers.

As we look forward to the upcoming 2016 year, TANMS’ focus remains on the antenna testbed demonstration to be presented at the upcoming Annual Review on May 17th. This demonstration represents another milestone in the search for new mechanisms to improve antenna performance and to deliver on TANMS’ original proposal. This demonstration will further increase interest in our center and represents another important step toward our self-sufficiency during our 10 year life cycle.















Gregory P. Carman
TANMS Center Director

NSF ERC Program Celebrates Its 30th Anniversary!

This past October marked the 30th Year Anniversary of the NSF Engineering Research Center Program. In the historic Cannon Caucus Room on Capitol Hill, representatives from each ERC culminated in the festivities. Center Director, Greg Carman, accompanied by Student Leadership President, Dominic Labanowski, TANMS Perfect Pitch Winner, Shauna Robbennolt, and IAB Chair, John Gianvittorio from Raytheon, represented TANMS at this special event. Among the numerous activities that took place was an evening event where student representatives of current ERCs showcased booths demonstrating research findings relating to their center's engineering discovery, technologies and tools that have resulted in high-impact achievements and address national priorities.  In addition, winners from each ERC's internal Perfect Pitch Competition competed for the top honor in the 2015 National Perfect Pitch Competition.  We would like to congratulate our colleagues with the QESST ERC at Arizona State University for winning the coveted Lynn Preston Perfect Pitch Trophy.  Competition was fierce and we would like to commend all of the contestants, especially our very own Shauna Robbennolt, for a job well done!

Research Highlight: TANMS Antenna

by Zhi (Jackie) Yao and Sidhant Tiwari, 2-D Thrust
This past year, TANMS’s 2D/Antenna Team continued on its mission to develop a sophisticated model to guide the design/fabrication of a state-of-the-art multiferroic antenna. The team decided to refocus from surface-acoustic-wave mediated (SAW) antennas to bulk-acoustic-wave (BAW) mediated antennas, due to stronger coupling in measurements. Recent results include the demonstration of the importance laminated thin-film magnetic materials play in designing high-performance multiferroic antennas with very low profiles. This echoes the theoretical conclusion previously discovered by TANMS, that the lower bound of radiation quality factor of an electric-current-driven low-profile antenna is inversely proportional to the relative permeability of the substrate.

Since multiferroic antennas consist of structures with characteristic dimensions on the order of 10-5 of electromagnetic wavelengths (i.e. electrically small), it’s important to have accurate modeling algorithms to design an optimum architecture. Presently, we are developing a custom, three-dimensional Alternating-Direction-Implicit (ADI) model, (e.g., ADI-FDTD); which has unconditional stability, and efficiently models the fine details of magnetic films, including shape anisotropy, eddy current loss and the multiple physics interactions (e.g. electro-magnetic-mechanical) arising in these electrically small antennas.

The TANMS 3-D modeling is rigorous yet computationally efficient, and capable of modeling the complex magnetoelastic anisotropies, dispersive, and/ or nonlinear behavior accurately. The numerical modeling tool provides guidelines and theoretical support to the multiferroic antenna design which is progressing along well within the center.

Measurement of the previous generation of BAW devices has yielded much insight on the experimental needs of the thrust. Construction of a custom measurement system to address these needs are underway. Meanwhile, a new generation of BAW devices with enhanced performance are currently being designed and fabricated to be used in this new measurement system. We continue to collaborate with our IAB members, with expertise in antennas, to minimize our time to innovation and are optimistic that our ‘break-through’ goals will be met in 2016!

IT WAS A HIT! 2015 Annual Research Strategy Meeting

This past October, TANMS hosted a full-day Nanoscale Multiferroic Structures for Meso-Micro RF Devices Strategy Meeting at UCLA with financial support from the Army Research Office. The purpose of this technical one day meeting was to provide an interdisciplinary forum for scientists and engineers from academia, small business/industry, large corporations, and army/national laboratories to discuss and evaluate nanoscale multiferroic elements specifically for RF applications. The full-day event was a resounding success with over 80 attendees representing a solid mix from global industry, academia and U.S. Government Agencies.
>>>See Event Program<<<

Welcome Dr. Maria del Pilar O'Cadiz, New TANMS Education Director

It is with pleasure that we start off the new year with the introduction of the new TANMS Education Director, Dr. Maria del Pilar O'Cadiz. Dr. O’Cadiz is a native Southern Californian, born to immigrant Mexican parents. She completed her undergraduate studies at Oberlin College in 1986, and two master’s degrees at UCLA (M.Ed. in Curriculum, Administration, and Teaching and M.A. in Latin American Studies). She studied abroad as an undergraduate student at the University of Cordoba, Spain and completed a year of graduate study at the University of São Paulo, Brazil through the UC Education Abroad Program. She earned her Ph.D. in Social Sciences and Comparative Education at UCLA in 1996, working with UCLA Distinguished Professor of Education, Carlos Alberto Torres, and received the Comparative and International Education Society’s Gail Kelly Outstanding Dissertation Award. As a Project Scientist at UC Irvine, working with Professor Deborah Lowe Vandell, she recently completed a three-year study of a statewide out-of-school time STEM learning initiative aimed at building STEM interest, engagement and career aspirations for K-12 students. 

Her professional experiences and interactions with talented students and dedicated educators and community leaders over the past two decades will continue to inform and motivate Pilar’s commitment to engaging diverse youth and young adults in 21st century career pathways through innovative expanded learning opportunities in her new role as TANMS Education Director.

Education Highlight: TANMS URP 2016 Kicks Off


The TANMS Undergraduate Research Program (URP) for 2016 kicked off in January with the participation of 27 undergraduate students working with 10 graduate student mentors and 8 faculty across UCLA and four partner institutions: Cal State Northridge, Cornell, UC Berkeley, and Northeastern University. Students from diverse backgrounds and academic majors—including Aerospace, Bioengineering, Chemistry-Materials Science, Mechanical Engineering, Computer Engineering and Physics—are part of this fourth year cohort of the TANMS URP Program. Graduate student mentors at UCLA worked together to further develop and implement an introduction to Ferroelectric Hysteresis module with 14 undergraduates. It was a dynamic learning experience for mentors and mentees alike and a fitting way to launch eight weeks of opportunities to hone their collaboration skills while building academic and research proficiencies. Examples of research projects students will be pursuing this session at UCLA include: Crystallization of Ultrathin Piezoelectric Films for Memory Applications, and Sol-gel Derived Thin Films of NiZn Ferrite for the Mulitferroic Antenna.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bx9j609ZPHjnd1hndEtldTFoMkE/view



TANMS Student Highlights!

Erick Ball, Cornell University 

Erick Ball is a fifth-year PhD candidate in Mechanical Engineering at Cornell University. His interests span mechanical, electrical, and nuclear engineering, physics, and computer science. As a graduate student in the Laboratory for Intelligent Machine Systems, his research has moved from pneumatic artificial muscles and the energy-efficiency of robotic quadruped gaits to piezoelectric MEMS devices, novel actuators, and of course multiferroics. His current focus is on the use of permanent magnets to control the onion state in multiferroic nano-rings so that they can produce motor torque and high power outputs.

Erick majored in engineering and minored in physics at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, after spending two years as a cadet at the US Air Force Academy. Between semesters, he interned at the Center for Space Nuclear Research in Idaho Falls, where he studied nuclear thermal rockets and how they could be used to deflect dangerous comets and asteroids, and later at NASA where he worked on renewable energy integration into the electrical grid. He grew up in Woodinville, WA where he spent his spare time on a volunteer search and rescue team.

Diana Chien, UCLA

Diana Chien is a fifth-year Ph.D. student in Chemical Engineering at UCLA under Professor Jane Chang. Her research work focuses on engineering nanoscale multiferroic composites for memory applications with atomic layer deposition of lead zirconate titanate (PZT) thin films for the 1-D and Materials Thrusts. She won the 2015 UCLA Tech Forum Best in Exploring Fundamental Science Poster Prize. Diana graduated from Brown University with a B.A. in Materials Engineering and with a Teacher Certification for Secondary Education in Physics and General Science. She received the Division of Engineering B.A. Outstanding Student Award for her graduating class. Prior to taking on the life of a Ph.D. student, Diana explored her interests including working as a high school chemistry teacher and served as a co-director for PJ Test Prep. It was her position as an Associate Instrumentation Engineer at WorleyParsons that spurred her interest in pursuing a Ph.D. in engineering.

She is thankful to have been a part of TANMS since its inception, and is looking forward to seeing TANMS grow in the future. Diana will be graduating in February 2016, and is very excited to begin her new job at Raytheon in El Segundo, CA as a Senior Systems Engineer in the Space and Airborne Systems division. Although Diana is from New York and will always be a New Yorker at heart, she admits to being spoiled by the California weather in her 9 years of living here, and will be staying in Los Angeles for the years to come.



Jizhai Cui, UCLA

Jizhai Cui is a fifth-year Ph.D. student at UCLA under TANMS faculty, Prof. Chris Lynch. He received a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from University of Science and Technology Beijing in 2011. In the summer of 2014, he was a visiting researcher with a TANMS international collaborator, Professor Mathias Kläui, at University of Mainz in Germany. His research focuses modeling, fabrication and characterization of nanoscale strain-mediated magnetoelectric devices. He is completing his doctoral studies and looking for postdoc or R&D scientist positions.


Paul Nordeen, UCLA

Paul Nordeen is a fifth-year mechanical engineering graduate student researcher working in Professor Gregory Carman’s Active Materials Laboratory at the University of California, Los Angeles. He graduated summa cum laude from California State University, Fullerton in 2010, with a B.S. in mechanical engineering and began his graduate research at UCLA the same year. With an academic focus on microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), Paul has been involved with many aspects of device fabrication and testing within TANMS. His early work on surface acoustic wave multiferroic antennae set the stage for what would later evolve into the TANMS 2D antenna thrust. His other research interests include static field magnetometers, spin wave dynamics and nano-patterned multiferroic characterization. Outside of research, Paul enjoys cooking and playing the guitar. In his spare time, he designs, builds and repairs many types of musical electronics from vacuum tube amplifiers to analog synthesizers. Paul is set to graduate from UCLA with his Ph.D. early in 2016 and is currently looking for positions in the defense and semiconductor industry.

Mark Nowakowski, UC Berkeley

Mark received his B.S. in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 2005 and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Physics from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2010 and 2011 in the group of David Awschalom. He is currently a postdoctoral fellow in Jeff Bokor’s group at the University of California, Berkeley. His research interests have focused on developing energy efficient micro and nano-magnetic technologies in a wide variety of materials, which include metals, semiconductors, ferromagnetic semiconductors, complex oxides, multiferroics, and suspended magnetic particles for applications such as quantum computation, memory, logic, sensing, and microfluidic particle manipulation. He has characterized these systems with optical, synchrotron x-ray, and transport-based measurements and have developed time-resolved optical and x-ray methods to study fundamental nanoscale magnetic properties on ultrafast timescales. He is interested in developing new characterization techniques and interrogating materials within the research areas of quantum computation, photonics, and magnetics to generate exciting research pathways that may benefit next-generation technologies.

IAB Highlight

We would like to take the opportunity to highlight a few of our industry partners and thank them for their support!

Congratulations Inston! Out of more than 3000 entries represented by 100 countries, Inston stood out as one of the six finalists in Cisco System's 2015 Innovation Grand Challenge.  Based in Los Angeles, Inston Inc. leads the innovation circle with their ultralow-power high-speed memory technology for green electronics.


Northrop Grumman has a long history of working with universities, small companies, and other organizations in the development of defense, homeland security and other critical programs. The Northrop Grumman Innovation Network encourages the most innovative academics at leading higher education research institutions and other organizations and individuals to work with Northrop Grumman in the development of the next-generation of these programs critical to our national and global security.  This past October, Northrop Grumman celebrated the winning of the much coveted U.S. Air Force contract to produce America's next stealth bomber.  


Raytheon Company is a technology and innovation leader specializing in defense, security and civil markets throughout the world. With a history of innovation spanning 92 years, Raytheon provides state-of-the-art electronics, mission systems integration and other capabilities in the areas of sensing; effects; and command, control, communications and intelligence systems; as well as a broad range of mission support services.

Our Latest Publications

Below is a sampling of our latest publications:
  1. Keller, Scott M., Cheng-Yen Liang, and Gregory P. Carman. "Voltage Control of Single Magnetic Domain Nanoscale Heterostructure, Analysis and Experiments." Mechanics of Composite and Multi-functional Materials, Volume 7. Springer International Publishing, 2016. 231-234. 
  2. Yang, X., Z. Zhou, T. Nan, Y. Gao, G. M. Yang, M. Liu, and N. X. Sun. "Recent advances in multiferroic oxide heterostructures and devices." Journal of Materials Chemistry C 4, no. 2 (2016): 234-243. 
  3. C. Grezes, F. Ebrahimi, J.G. Alzate, X. Cai, J. A. Katine, J. Langer, B. Ocker, P. Khalili Amiri, K.L. Wang, "Ultra-low switching energy and scaling in electric-field-controlled nanoscale magnetic tunnel junctions with high resistance-area product", Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 108, No. 1, p. 012403, January 2016. 
  4. 4. Ong V., Kioussis Nicholas Amiri , P. Khalili, Wang K. L., and Carman Gregory P., Strain control magnetocrystalline anisotropy Ta/FeCo/MgO heterostructures, Journal of Appl. Phys. 117, 17B518 (2015). 5. S. A. Fedorov, N. M. Chtchelkatchev, O. G. Udalov, and I. S. Beloborodov "Single electron tunneling with slow insulators", Phys. Rev. B 92, 115425 (2015)
  5. Tang Y. -H., Chu F. -C., and Kioussis Nicholas, Dual Control of Giant Field-like Spin Torque in Spin Filter Tunnel Junctions, Scientific Reports 5, 11341 (2015). 
  6. P. Upadhyaya, G. Yu, P. Khalili Amiri, K.L. Wang, "Electric-field guiding of magnetic skyrmions", Physical Review B, Vol. 92, No. 13, pp. 134411/1-9, October 2015. 
  7. X. Li, G. Yu, H. Wu, P.V. Ong, K. Wong, Q. Hu, F. Ebrahimi, P. Upadhyaya, M. Akyol, N. Kioussis, X. Han, P. Khalili Amiri, K.L. Wang, "Thermally stable voltage-controlled perpendicular magnetic anisotropy in Mo|CoFeB|MgO structures", Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 107, No. 14, pp. 142403/1-5, October 2015. 
  8. Jizhai Cui, Cheng-Yen Liang, Elizabeth A. Paisley, Abdon Sepulveda, Jon F. Ihlefeld, Gregory P. Carman, Christopher S. Lynch, “Generation of localized strain in a thin film piezoelectric to control individual magnetoelectric heterostructures”, Applied Physics Letters, 107, 092903 (2015) 
  9. U.K. Bhaskar, N. Banerjee, A. Abdollahi, Z. Wang, D.G. Schlom, G. Rijnders, and G. Catalan, “A Flexoelectric Microelectromechanical System on Silicon,” Nature Nanotechnology, online pre-print, November 2015. 
  10. J.T. Heron, J.L. Bosse, Q. He, Y. Gao, M. Trassin, L. Ye, J.D. Clarkson, C. Wang, J. Liu, S. Salahuddin, D.C. Ralph, D.G. Schlom, J. Íñiguez, B.D. Huey, and R. Ramesh, “Deterministic Switching of Ferromagnetism at Room Temperature using an Electric Field,” Nature 516, 370–373, 2014. 
  11. Yang, X., Zhou, Z., Nan, T., Gao, Y., Yang, G. M., Liu, M., & Sun, N. X. (2016). “Recent advances in multiferroic oxide heterostructures and devices.” Journal of Materials Chemistry C, 4(2), 234-243. 
  12. M. Montazeri, P. Upadhyaya, M.C. Onbasli, G. Yu, K.L. Wong, M. Lang, Y. Fan, X. Li, P. Khalili Amiri, R.N. Schwartz, C.A. Ross, K.L. Wang, "Magneto-optical investigation of spin–orbit torques in metallic and insulating magnetic heterostructures", Nature Communications, Vol. 6, p. 8958, December 2015. 
  13. O. G. Udalov, N. M. Chtchelkatchev, S. A. Fedorov, and I. S. Beloborodov "Conductance of a single electron transistor with a retarded dielectric layer in the gate capacitor", Phys. Rev. B 92, 205416 (2015) 
  14. P. Khalili, K.L. Wang, "The computer chip that never forgets", IEEE Spectrum, Vol. 52, No. 7, pp. 30-56, July 2015. (Invited Paper) 
  15. P. Khalili Amiri, J.G. Alzate, X.Q. Cai, F. Ebrahimi, Q. Hu, K. Wong, C. Grèzes, H. Lee, G. Yu, X. Li, M. Akyol, Q. Shao, J.A. Katine, J. Langer, B. Ocker, K.L. Wang, "Electric-Field-Controlled Magnetoelectric Random Access Memory: Progress, Challenges, and Scaling", IEEE Transactions on Magnetics, online pre-print, June 2015. 
  16. Sohn, H., Nowakowski, M.E., Liang, C.Y., Hockel, J.L., Wetzlar, K., Keller, S., McLellan, B.M., Marcus, M.A., Doran, A., Young, A., Klaui, M., Carman, G.P., Bokor, J. and Candler, R.N., "Electrically Driven Magnetic Domain Wall Rotation in:Multiferroic Heterostructures to Manipulate Suspended On-Chip Magnetic Particles", ACS NANO, 9(5):4814 – 4826, 2015. 
  17. Zhi Yao; Wang, Y.E.; Keller, S.; Carman, G.P., "Bulk Acoustic Wave-Mediated Multiferroic Antennas: Architecture and Performance Bound," in Antennas and Propagation, IEEE Transactions on , vol.63, no.8, pp.3335-3344, Aug. 2015 
  18. Xu Li, Dorinamaria Carka, Cheng-yen Liang, Abdon E Sepulveda, Scott M Keller, Pedram Khalili Amiri, Gregory P Carman, Christopher S Lynch, “Strain-mediated 180° perpendicular magnetization switching of a single domain multiferroic structure”, Journal of Applied Physics 118 (1), 014101 (2015) 
  19. Long You, OukJae Lee, Debanjan Bhowmik, Dominic Labanowski, Jeongmin Hong, Jeffrey Bokor, and Sayeef Salahuddin. “Switching of perpendicularly polarized nano-magnets with spin orbit torque without an external magnetic field by engineering a tilted anisotropy,” Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences, 10.1073/pnas.1507474112, 2015. 
  20. Y. Lee, Z.Q. Liu, J.T. Heron, J.D. Clarkson, J. Hong, C. Ko, M.D. Biegalski, U. Aschauer, S.L. Hsu, M.E. Nowakowski, J. Wu, H.M. Christen, S. Salahuddin, J.B. Bokor, N.A. Spaldin, D.G. Schlom, and R. Ramesh, “Large Resistivity Modulation in Mixed-Phase Metallic Systems,” Nature Communications 6 (2015) 5959. 
  21. Useinov, U., Kalitsov, A., Velev, Julian, and Kioussis, Nicholas “Ferroelectric control of spin-transfer torque in multiferroic tunnel junctions”, Phys. Rev. B 91, 094408 (2015). 
  22. Ong, P.V., Kioussis Nicholas, Odkhuu D., Amiri, P. Khalili, Wang, K. L., and Carman, G.P. " Giant voltage modulation of magnetic anisotropy in strained heavy metal/magnet/insulator heterostructures", Phys. Rev. B 92, 020407(R) (2015). 
  23. Khan, AI (Khan, Asif Islam); Chatterjee, K (Chatterjee, Korok); Wang, B (Wang, Brian); Drapcho, S (Drapcho, Steven); You, L (You, Long); Serrao, C (Serrao, Claudy); Bakaul, SR (Bakaul, Saidur Rahman); Ramesh, R (Ramesh, Ramamoorthy); Salahuddin, S (Salahuddin, Sayeef), Negative capacitance in a ferroelectric capacitor, NATURE MATERIALS Volume: 14 Issue: 2 Pages: 182-186 DOI: 10.1038/NMAT4148 Published: FEB 2015. 
  24. T.E. Quickel, L.T. Schelhas, R.A. Farrell, N. Petkov, V.H. Le, S.H. Tolbert, “Mesoporous Bismuth Ferrite with Amplified Magnetoelectric Coupling and Electric Field Induced Ferrimagnetism.” Nature Comm. 6, 6562 (2015). 
  25. L.T. Schelhas, M.J. Banholzer, C.A. Mirkin, S.H. Tolbert, “Magnetic Confinement and Coupling in Narrow-Diameter Au-Ni Nanowires.” J. Magnetism Magnetic Mater. 379, 239–243, (2015).