Enhancement of the Anti-Damping Spin Torque Efficacy of Platinum by Interface Modification

Abstract

We report a strong enhancement of the efficacy of the spin Hall effect (SHE) of Pt for exerting anti-damping spin torque on an adjacent ferromagnetic layer by the insertion of $\approx$ 0.5 nm layer of Hf between a Pt film and a thin, < 2 nm, Fe${}_{60}$Co${}_{20}$B${}_{20}$ ferromagnetic layer. This enhancement is quantified by measurement of the switching current density when the ferromagnetic layer is the free electrode in a magnetic tunnel junction. The results are explained as the suppression of spin pumping through a substantial decrease in the effective spin-mixing conductance of the interface, but without a concomitant reduction of the ferromagnet\' s absorption of the SHE generated spin current.

Main text and Supplementary material

References in corpus (3)

• Theory of spin Hall magnetoresistance
• Enhancement of the Anti-Damping Spin Torque Efficacy of Platinum by Interface Modification
• Interfacial Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction in Ta\Co20Fe60B20\MgO nanowires

Cited by in corpus (8)

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• Current induced magnetization switching in PtCoCr structures with enhanced perpendicular magnetic anisotropy and spin-orbit torques
• Tuning the perpendicular magnetic anisotropy, spin Hall switching current density and domain wall velocity by submonolayer insertion in Ta / CoFeB / MgO heterostructures