Sergio Montoya

Dr. Montoya's research interests include:

• Secure erasure of magnetic storage technologies
• Topological phases in nanostructured materials and their devices,
• Interfacial and thin film magnetism,
• Spintronics
• X-ray and neutron scattering
• Cryogenic and superconducting sensing and storage devices

Dr. Sergio A. Montoya received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of California, San Diego in 2016. During his Ph.D. studies, he made important contributions to stabilizing chiral magnetic phases formed in thin-film magnets and understanding their dynamics, including the discovery of dipole-stabilized hybrid skyrmions. From 2017 to 2021, he worked at Naval Information Warfare Center Pacific, a U. S. Navy laboratory, where he pursued basic and applied research on spintronics, cryogenic and electromagnetic packaging, and superconducting devices. Since 2021, Montoya has been a scholar at UC San Diego’s Center for Memory and Recording Research. His current research interests span the discovery, tailoring, and exploitation of novel electric and magnetic phases in nanostructured materials for developing next generation information and sensor technologies, as well as methodologies to securely erase and/or recover information stored in magnetic storage technologies. He is a recipient of the U.S. DoD SMART Scholarship

Present-2016
A. Montoya, M. Lubarda, and V. Lomakin. Transport properties of skyrmions in amorphous Fe/Gd multilayers. Comm. Phys. 5(1), 293 (2022).
 
Zusin, E. Iacocca, L. Le Guyader, A. H. Reid, W. F. Schlotter, T.-M. Liu, D. J. Higley, G. Coslovich, S. F. Wandel, P. M. Tengdin, S. K. K. Patel, A. Shabalin, N. Hua, S. B. Hrkac, H. T. Nemnach, J. M. Shaw, S. A. Montoya, A. Blonsky, C. Gentry, M. A. Hoefer, M. M. Murnane, H. C. Kapteyn, E. E. Fullerton, O. Shpyrko, H. A. Durr, T. J. Silva. Ultrafast domain dilation induced by optical pumping in ferromagnetic CoFe/Ni multilayers. Phys. Rev. B 106(14), 144422 (2022).
 
A. Assefa, M. H. Seaberg, A. H. Reid, L. Shen, V. Esposito, B. Holladay, R. Streubel, S. A. Montoya, P. Hart, K. Nakahara, S. Moeller, S. D. Kevan, P. Fischer, E. E. Fullerton, W. Colocho, A. Lutman, F.-J. Decker, S. K. Sinha, S. Roy, E. Blackburn, and J. J. Turner. Fluctuation-dissipation measurement instrument at LCLS. Rev. Sci. Instrum. 93, 083902 (2022).
 
Singh, J. C. T Lee, K. E. Avila, Y. Chen, R. S. Streubel, S. A. Montoya, E. E. Fullerton, P. Fischer, K. A. Dahmen, S. D. Kevan, M. K. Sanyal, S. Roy. Wavevector plateaus and modulated periodicities in an amorphous magnetic thin film. Phys. Rev. B 105, 094423 (2022).
 
H. Seaberg, B. Holladay, S. A. Montoya, X. Y. Zheng, J. C. T. Lee, A. H. Reid, J. D. Koralek, G. Coslovich, P. Walter, S. Zohar, V. Thampy, M. F. Lin, P. Hart, K. Nakahara, R. Streubel, S. D. Kevan, P. Fischer, W. Colocho, A. Lutman, F.-J. Decker, E. E. Fullerton, M. Dunne, S. Roy, S. K. Sinha, and J. J. Turner. Magnetic skyrmion lattice fluctuations. Phys. Rev. Mater. (2021).
 
Brock, S. A. Montoya, M.-Y. Im, E. E. Fullerton. Energy efficient current-induced magnetic skyrmions in Co/Ni/Pt thin-film multilayers. Phys. Rev. Mater. 4, 104409 (2020).
 
Brock, P. Vallobra, R. D. Tolley, S. A. Montoya, S. Mangin, E. E. Fullerton. Current-induced generation of skyrmions in Pt/Co/Os/Pt thin films. Phys. Rev. B 102, 024443 (2020).
 
Esposito, X.Y. Zheng, M. H. Seaberg, S. A. Montoya, B. Holladay, A. H. Reid, R. Streubel, J. C. Lee, L. Shen, J. D. Koralek, G. Coslovich, P. Walter, S. Zohar, V. Thampy, M. F. Lin, P. Hart, K. Kakahara, P. Fischer, W. Colocho, A. Lutman, F.-J. Decker, S. K. Sinha, E. E. Fullerton, S. D. Kevan, S. Roy, M. Dunne, J. J. Turner. Skyrmion fluctuations at a first-order phase transition boundary. Appl. Phys. Lett. 116, 181901 (2020).
 
S.-G. Je, H.-S. Han, S. K. Kim, S. A. Montoya, W. Chao, I.-S. Hong, E. E. Fullerton, K.-S. Lee, K.-J. Lee, M.-Y. Im, J.-I. Hong. Direct demonstration of topological stability of magnetic skyrmions via topology manipulation. ACS Nano 14 (3), 3251 (2020).
 
D. Desatels, L. DeBeer-Schmitt, S. A. Montoya, M. R. Fitzsimmons, E. E. Fullerton, D. Gilbert. Realization of magnetic skyrmions in nanostructures thin films at ambient conditions. Phys. Rev. Mater. 3, 104406 (2019).
 
Singh, J. C. T Lee, K. E. Avila, Y. Chen, S. A. Montoya, E. E. Fullerton, P. Fischer, K. A. Dahmen, S. D. Kevan, M. K. Sanyal, S. Roy. Dramatic reduction in domain cascades between stripe and skyrmion phases, Nature Comm. 10, 1988 (2019).
 
Ma, H. Qian, S. A. Montoya, W. Bao, L. Ferrari, H. Hu, E. Khan, Y. Wang, E. E. Fullerton, E. Narimanov, X. Zhang, Z. Liu. Experimental demonstration of hyperbolic metamaterial assisted illumination nanoscopy. ACS Nano 12, 11, 11316-11322 (2018).
 
A. Montoya, R. Tolley, I. Gilbert, M.-Y. Im, E. E. Fullerton. Spin-orbit torque induced dipole skyrmion motion at room temperature. Phys. Rev. B 98, 104432 (2018).
 
Tolley, S. A. Montoya, and E. E. Fullerton. Room-temperature observation and current control of skyrmions in Pt/Co/Os/Pt thin films. Phys. Rev. Mater. 2, 044404 (2018).
 
Medapalli, D. Afanasiev, D. Kim, Y. Quessab, S. A. Montoya, A. Kirilyuk, T. Rasing, A. V. Kimel and E. E. Fullerton. Multiscale dynamics of helicity-dependent all-optical magnetization reversal in ferromagnetic Co/Pt multilayers. Phys. Rev. B 96, 224421 (2017).
 
H. Seaberg, B. Holladay, J. C. T. Lee, M. Sikorski, A. H. Reid, S. A. Montoya, G. L. Dakovski, J. D. Koralek, G. Coslovich, S. Moeller, W. F. Schlotter, R. Streubel, S. D. Kevan, P. Fischer, E. E. Fullerton, J. L. Turner, F.-J. Decker, S. K. Sinha, S. Roy and J. J. Turner. Nanosecond x-ray photon correlation spectroscopy on magnetic skyrmions. Phys. Rev. Lett. 119, 067403 (2017).
 
H.-H. Lin, F. Vallini, M.-H. Yang, R. Sharma, M. W. Puckett, S. A. Montoya, C. D. Wurm, E. E. Fullerton and Y. Fainman. Electronic metamaterials with tunable second-order optical nonlinearities. Sci. Rep. 7, 9983 (2017).
 
A. Montoya, S. Couture, J. J. Chess, J. C. T. Lee, N. Kent, M.-Y. Im, S. D. Kevan, P. Fischer, B. J. McMorran, S. Roy, V. Lomakin, and E. E. Fullerton. Resonant properties of dipole skyrmions. Phys. Rev. B 95, 224405 (2017).
 
H.-H. Lin, M.-H. Yang, R. Sharma, M. W. Puckett, S. A. Montoya, C. D. Wurm, F. Vallini, E. E. Fullerton and Y. Fainman. Synthesis of Second-order Nonlinearities in Dielectric-Semiconductor-Dielectric Metamaterials. App. Phys. Lett. 110,113103 (2017).
 
J. Chess, S. A. Montoya, T. R. Harvey, C. Ophus, S. Couture, V. Lomakin, E. E. Fullerton, B. J. McMorran. A streamlined approach to mapping magnetic induction of skyrmion materials. Ultramicroscopy 177, 78-83 (2017).
 
A. Montoya, S. Couture, J. J. Chess, J. C. T. Lee, N. Kent, D. Henze, S. K. Sinha, M.-Y. Im, S. D. Kevan, P. Fischer, B. J. McMorran, V. Lomakin, S. Roy and E. E. Fullerton. Tailoring magnetic energies to stabilize dipole skyrmions and skyrmion lattices. Phys. Rev. B 95, 024415 (2017).
 
Smalley, F. Vallini, S. A. Montoya, L. Ferrari, S. Shahin, C. Riley, B. Kante, E. E. Fullerton, Z. Liu and Y. Fainman, Luminescent Hyperbolic Metasurfaces, Nature Comm. 8, 13793 (2017).
 
C. T Lee, J. J. Chess, S. A. Montoya, X. Shi, N. Tamura, S. K. Mishra, P. Fischer, B. J. McMorran, S. K. Sinha, E. E. Fullerton, S. D. Kevan and S. Roy. Synthesizing skyrmion bound pairs in Fe-Gd films. Appl. Phys. Lett. 109, 022402 (2016).

Technician: Ray Descoteaux