We are very pleased to welcome Bennet Karetta to the INSPIRE group. He joins the group as a M.Sc. Candidate joint with the TWIST group. We are looking forward to a successful collaboration.
Contact information:
Tobias Wagner
Email: tobias.wagner@uni-mainz.de
We are very pleased to welcome Bennet Karetta to the INSPIRE group. He joins the group as a M.Sc. Candidate joint with the TWIST group. We are looking forward to a successful collaboration.
Contact information:
Bennet Karetta
Email: karetta@uni-mainz.de

We congratulate Olena (Helen) Gomonay on obtaining her first DFG research grant “SHARP: Spintronics witHAntiferRomagntes and Phonos”. Well done Helen!
The proposed research project will open and explore new ways to detect and manipulate antiferromagnets using phonons and magneto-elastic coupling effects.
We congratulate Dr. Karin Everschor-Sitte, group leader of TWIST, for receiving the Hertha-Sponer-Preis 2018
Research Interest
I am interested in developing theoretical models to describe spin dependent phenomena in organic and inorganic semiconductors, in order to understand their electronic, magnetic and transport properties. I have developed tight-binding models to describe electronic and magnetic properties of magnetic doped inorganics semiconductors. I am currently working in theoretical modeling of spin transport in organics to study spin Hall effect, Chiral induced spin selectivity and spin diffusion length in organic semiconductors.
Publications (Highlights)
- Mohammad M. Qaid, M.R. Mahani, J. Sinova, and G. Schmidt, Quantifying the inverse spin-Hall effect in highly doped PEDOT:PSS, Phys. Rev. Research 2, 013207 (2020).
- Shu-Jen Wang, Deepak Venkateshvaran, M. R. Mahani, Uday Chopra, ..., Jairo Sinova and Henning Sirringhaus, Long spin diffusion lengths in doped conjugated polymers due to enhanced exchange coupling, Nature Electronics, 2, 98–107 (2019).
- M.R. Mahani, A. Mirsakiyeva, Anna Delin, Breakdown of Polarons in Conducting Polymers at Device Field Strengths, J. Phys. Chem. C, 121 (19), 10317 (2017).
- Simone Borlenghi, M.R. Mahani, Anna Delin, Jonas Fransson, Micromagnetic simulations of spin-torque driven magnetisation dynamics with spatially resolved spin transport and magnetisation texture, Phys. Rev. B 96, 094428 (2017).
- M.R. Mahani, A. H. MacDonald, C.M. Canali, Electric manipulation of the Mn-acceptor binding energy and the Mn-Mn exchange interaction on the GaAs (110) surface by nearby As vacancies, Phys. Rev. B 92, 045304 (2015).
- M.R. Mahani, A. Pertsova, C.M. Canali, Spin dynamics of Mn impurities and their bound acceptors in GaAs, Phys. Rev. B 90, 245406 (2014).
- M.R. Mahani, A. Pertsova, M. F. Islam, C.M. Canali, Interplay between Mn-acceptor state and Dirac surface states in Mn doped Bi2Se3 topological insulator, Phys. Rev. B 90, 195441 (2014).
Reza Mahani has just joined the group and will support the Organic Spintronics team as a postdoctoral researcher. Before he was a postdoctoral researcher at the School of Information and Communication Technology at KTH, Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden.
We wish him a good start in Mainz!
You can find us in Dresden from March 19-24, where we present our work at the DPG Spring Meeting of the Condensed Matter Section.
Consult the conference program for more details.
Research Interest
The purpose of my research is studying spin-orbit coupling effects in magnetic multilayers. The advantage of spin-orbit coupling is that direct coupling between the spin angular momentum and the orbital motion allows for angular momentum flow from the lattice to electron spins. This allows manipulating and detecting magnetic states by applying an electrical current with high efficiency. Spin-orbit torque, which is a torque on magnetization induced by spin-orbit coupling, is a good example. Furthermore, other spin-related phenomena, such as spin motive force, magnetic damping, and magnetoresistance, are also significantly affected by spin-orbit coupling.
In magnetic multilayers, inversion symmetry is naturally broken, allowing new physics which have been protected by symmetry. The effects of symmetry breaking becomes more important when the dimension of the system goes down to nanoscale. Since the effective spin-orbit coupling parameter is magnified in the presence of symmetry breaking, the strong spin-orbit coupling effects not only give rise to quantitative corrections to known phenomena, but also result in qualitatively different behaviors.
Not only does spin-orbit copuling affect the magnetization dynamics in nonequilibrium situations, it also affects the equilibrium properties. Examples include the emergence of Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction, perpendicular magnetic anisotropy, and skyrmion states. It means that the equilibrium properties are highly correlated with the nonequilibrium properties via the spin-orbit coupling parameter. Revealing such correlations would be not only deepen our understanding of spin-orbit coupling in magnetic nanostructures, but also advance the realization of spintronic device applications.

Expertise
- Magnetization dynamics
- Spin-transfer torque and spin motive force
- Magnetic damping and anisotropy
- Motion of magnetic solitons
- Spin-orbit interaction in nanostructures
- Spin-orbit coupling effects in magnetic bilayers
- Interfacial spin-orbit coupling due to broken inversion symmetry
- Spin-orbit torque
Publications (Highlights)
- "Field-free switching of perpendicular magnetization through spin-orbit torque in antiferromagnet/ferromagnet/oxide structures", Y.-W. Oh, S.-h. C. Baek, Y. M. Kim, H. Y. Lee, K.-D. Lee, C.-G. Yang, E.-S. Park, Ki-S. Lee, K.-W. Kim, G. Go, J.-R. Jeong, B.-C. Min, H.-W. Lee, K.-J. Lee, and B.-G. Park, Nature Nanotechnology 11, 878-884 (2016).
- "Chirality from interfacial spin-orbit coupling effects in magnetic bilayers", K.-W. Kim, H.-W. Lee, K.-J. Lee, and M. D. Stiles, Physical Review Letters 111, 216601 (2013).
- "Current-induced motion of a transverse magnetic domain wall in the presence of spin Hall effect", S.-M. Seo (equal), K.-W. Kim (equal), J. Ryu, H.-W. Lee, and K.-J. Lee, Applied Physics Letters 101, 022405 (2012).
- "Prediction of giant spin motive force due to Rashba spin-orbit coupling", K.-W. Kim, J.-H. Moon, K.-J. Lee, and H.-W. Lee, Physical Review Letters 108, 217202 (2012).
- "Magnetization dynamics induced by in-plane currents in ultrathin magnetic nanostructures with Rashba spin-orbit coupling", K.-W. Kim, S.-M. Seo, J. Ryu, K.-J. Lee, and H.-W. Lee, Physical Review B 85, 180404(R) (2012).