Effective strain manipulation of the antiferromagnetic state of polycrystalline NiO

Abstract

As a candidate material for applications such as magnetic memory, polycrystalline antiferromagnets offer the same robustness to external magnetic fields, THz spin dynamics, and lack of stray field as their single crystalline counterparts, but without the limitation of epitaxial growth and lattice matched substrates. Here, we first report the detection of the average Neel vector orientiation in polycrystalline NiO via spin Hall magnetoresistance (SMR). Secondly, by applying strain through a piezo-electric substrate, we reduce the critical magnetic field required to reach a saturation of the SMR signal, indicating a change of the anisotropy. Our results are consistent with polycrystalline NiO exhibiting a positive sign of the in-plane magnetostriction. This method of anisotropy-tuning offers an energy efficient, on-chip alternative to manipulate a polycrystalline antiferromagnets magnetic state.

References in corpus (15)

• Antiferromagnetic spintronics
• Antidamping torque-induced switching in biaxial antiferromagnetic insulators
• Spin Hall magnetoresistance in antiferromagnet/heavy-metal heterostructures
• Negative spin Hall magnetoresistance of Pt on the bulk easy-plane antiferromagnet NiO
• Mechanism of Néel order switching in antiferromagnetic thin films revealed by magnetotransport and direct imaging
• Electric-Field-Controlled Antiferromagnetic Spintronic Devices
• Electrical Switching of Tristate Antiferromagnetic Néel Order in $\alpha$-Fe${}_2$O${}_3$ Epitaxial Films
• Full angular dependence of the spin Hall and ordinary magnetoresistance in epitaxial antiferromagnetic NiO(001)/Pt thin films
• Quantitative Study on Current-Induced Effect in an Antiferromagnet Insulator/Pt Bilayer Film
• Antiferromagnetic Piezospintronics
• Temperature dependent spin transport properties of Platinum inferred from spin Hall magnetoresistance measurements
• Spin Seebeck imaging of spin-torque switching in antiferromagnetic Pt/NiO heterostructures
• Anisotropic Magnetoresistance and Nontrivial Spin Hall Magnetoresistance in Pt/$\alpha$-Fe${}_2$O${}_3$ Bilayers
• Spin Hall magnetoresistance in antiferromagnet/normal metal bilayers
• Spin structure and spin Hall magnetoresistance of epitaxial thin films of the insulating non-collinear antiferromagnet SmFeO${}_3$

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Strain-induced Shape Anisotropy in Antiferromagnetic Structures
• Insight into the structural and magnetotransport properties of epitaxial heterostructures $\alpha$-Fe${}_2$O${}_3$-Pt(111): Role of the reversed layer sequence
• Generation of imprinted strain gradients for spintronics
• Strain-driven domain wall network with chiral junctions in an antiferromagnet