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Central role of domain wall depinning for perpendicular magnetization switching driven by spin torque from the spin Hall effect

Cornell Affiliated Author(s)

Author

O. Lee
L. Liu
C. Pai
Y. Li
H. Tseng
P. Gowtham
J. Park
D. Ralph
Robert Buhrman

Abstract

We study deterministic magnetic reversal of a perpendicularly magnetized Co layer in a Co/MgO/Ta nanosquare driven by spin Hall torque from an in-plane current flowing in an underlying Pt layer. The rate-limiting step of the switching process is domain wall (DW) depinning by spin Hall torque via a thermally assisted mechanism that eventually produces full reversal by domain expansion. An in-plane applied magnetic field collinear with the current is required, with the necessary field scale set by the need to overcome DW chirality imposed by the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction. Once Joule heating is taken into account the switching current density is quantitatively consistent with a spin Hall angle θSH≈0.07 for 4 nm of Pt. © 2014 American Physical Society.

Date Published

Journal

American Physical Society (APS)

Volume

89

Issue

2

URL

https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-84894712214&doi=10.1103%2fPhysRevB.89.024418&partnerID=40&md5=c6006be6f787fb9f7874af2d9717ef30

DOI

10.1103/PhysRevB.89.024418

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