Electrical Néel-order switching in magnetron-sputtered CuMnAs thin films
arXiv:1903.12387 · doi:10.1103/PhysRevApplied.12.064003
Abstract
Antiferromagnetic materials as active components in spintronic devices promise insensitivity against external magnetic fields, the absence of own magnetic stray fields, and ultrafast dynamics at the picosecond time scale. Materials with certain crystal-symmetry show an intrinsic Néel-order spin-orbit torque that can efficiently switch the magnetic order of an antiferromagnet. The tetragonal variant of CuMnAs was shown to be electrically switchable by this intrinsic spin-orbit effect and its use in memory cells with memristive properties has been recently demonstrated for high-quality films grown with molecular beam epitaxy. Here, we demonstrate that the magnetic order of magnetron-sputtered CuMnAs films can also be manipulated by electrical current pulses. The switching efficiency and relaxation as a function of temperature, current density, and pulse width can be described by a thermal-activation model. Our findings demonstrate that CuMnAs can be fabricated with an industry-compatible deposition technique, which will accelerate the development cycle of devices based on this remarkable material.
arXiv comment6 + 4 pages, 4 + 4 figures (main + appendix)
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Cited by in corpus (12)
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- Current-driven writing process in antiferromagnetic Mn2Au for memory applications
- Magnetoresistance effects in the metallic antiferromagnet MnAu
- Spin-orbit torque induced electrical switching of antiferromagnetic MnN
- Resistive contribution in electrical switching experiments with antiferromagnets
- Low-Energy Switching of Antiferromagnetic CuMnAs/ GaP Using sub-10 Nanosecond Current Pulses
- Magnetocrystalline anisotropy of the easy-plane metallic antiferromagnet FeAs
- Generalised form of the magnetic anisotropy field in micromagnetic and atomistic spin models
- Strongly two-dimensional exchange interactions in the in-plane metallic antiferromagnet FeAs probed by inelastic neutron scattering
- Scaling the electrical current switching of exchange bias in fully-epitaxial antiferromagnet/ferromagnet bilayers
- Thermally Stable Peltier Controlled Vacuum Chamber for Electrical Transport Measurements
- High-resolution diffraction reveals magnetoelastic coupling and coherent phase separation in tetragonal CuMnAs