posted on 2021-04-06, 18:04authored byLizhu Ren, Liang Liu, Xinyu Shu, Weinan Lin, Ping Yang, Jingsheng Chen, Kie Leong Teo
Current-induced spin–orbit
torque (SOT) switching of magnetization
has attracted great interest due to its potential application in magnetic
memory devices, which offer low-energy consumption and high-speed
writing. However, most of the SOT studies on perpendicularly magnetized
anisotropy (PMA) magnets have been limited to heterostructures with
interfacial PMA and poor thermal stability. Here, we experimentally
demonstrate a SOT magnetization switching for a ferrimagnetic D022-Mn3Ge film with high bulk PMA and robust thermal
stability factor under a critical current density of 6.6 × 1011 A m–2 through the spin Hall effect of
an adjacent capping Pt and a buffer Cr layer. A large effective damping-like
SOT efficiency of 2.37 mT/1010 A m–2 is
determined using harmonic measurements in the structure. The effect
of the double-spin source layers and the negative-exchange interaction
of the ferrimagnet may explain the large SOT efficiency and the manifested
magnetization switching of Mn3Ge. Our findings demonstrate
that D022-Mn3Ge is a promising candidate for
application in high-density SOT magnetic random-access memory devices.