Strong lateral exchange coupling and current-induced switching in single-layer ferrimagnetic films with patterned compensation temperature

Abstract

Strong, adjustable magnetic couplings are of great importance to all devices based on magnetic materials. Controlling the coupling between adjacent regions of a single magnetic layer, however, is challenging. In this work, we demonstrate strong exchange-based coupling between arbitrarily shaped regions of a single ferrimagnetic layer. This is achieved by spatially patterning the compensation temperature of the ferrimagnet by either oxidation or He+ irradiation. The coupling originates at the lateral interface between regions with different compensation temperature and scales inversely with their width. We show that this coupling generates large lateral exchange coupling fields and we demonstrate its application to control the switching of magnetically compensated dots with an electric current.

References in corpus (4)

• Hund's rule-driven Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction at 3d-5d interfaces
• Synthetic chiral magnets promoted by the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction
• Synchronization of chiral vortex nano-oscillators
• Engineering of Intrinsic Chiral Torques in Magnetic Thin Films Based on the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya Interaction