Giant anisotropic magnetoresistance and nonvolatile memory in canted antiferromagnet Sr2IrO4

Abstract

Antiferromagnets have been generating intense interest in the spintronics community, owing to their intrinsic appealing properties like zero stray field and ultrafast spin dynamics. While the control of antiferromagnetic (AFM) orders has been realized by various means, applicably appreciated functionalities on the readout side of AFM-based devices are urgently desired. Here, we report the remarkably enhanced anisotropic magnetoresistance (AMR) as giant as ~ 160% in a simple resistor structure made of AFM Sr2IrO4 without auxiliary reference layer. The underlying mechanism for the giant AMR is an indispensable combination of atomic scale giant-MR-like effect and magnetocrystalline anisotropy energy, which was not accessed earlier. Furthermore, we demonstrate the bistable nonvolatile memory states that can be switched in-situ without the inconvenient heat-assisted procedure, and robustly preserved even at zero magnetic field, due to the modified interlayer coupling by 1% Ga-doping in Sr2IrO4. These findings represent a straightforward step toward the AFM spintronic devices.

23 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (8)

• Writing and Reading antiferromagnetic Mn${}_2$Au: Néel spin-orbit torques and large anisotropic magnetoresistance
• Spin-orbit coupling induced anisotropy effects in bimetallic antiferromagnets: A route towards antiferromagnetic spintronics
• The magnetic and crystal structures of Sr2IrO4: A neutron diffraction study
• Robustness of basal-plane antiferromagnetic order and the $J_{eff}=1/2$ state in single-layer iridate spin-orbit Mott insulators
• Neutron scattering study of correlated phase behavior in Sr2IrO4
• Spin Transfer Torque in Antiferromagnetic Spin-Valves: From Clean to Disordered Regimes
• Model analysis of magnetic susceptibility of Sr${}_2$IrO${}_4$ - 2D $J_{\mathrm{eff}}$ = 1/2 Heisenberg system with competing interlayer couplings
• Isothermal anisotropic magnetoresistance in antiferromagnetic metallic IrMn

Cited by in corpus (3)

• Strain-engineering of the charge and spin-orbital interactions in Sr2IrO4
• Spin-orbit-enhanced magnetic surface second-harmonic generation in Sr${}_2$IrO${}_4$
• Epitaxial growth and antiferromagnetism of Sn-substituted perovskite iridate SrIr${}_{0.8}$Sn${}_{0.2}$O${}_3$