Spin-Torque Switching with the Giant Spin Hall Effect of Tantalum
Spin-Torque Switching with the Giant Spin Hall Effect of Tantalum
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DOI：
10.1126/science.1218197
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发表时间：
2012-05-04
期刊：
影响因子：
56.9
通讯作者：
Buhrman, R. A.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Liu, Luqiao;Pai, Chi-Feng;Buhrman, R. A.
自旋电流可在自旋电子器件中施加有用的转矩。自旋霍尔效应已被提议作为自旋电流的一个来源，但其强度适中，限制了它的实用性。我们报道了在β - 钽中存在巨大的自旋霍尔效应（SHE），它所产生的自旋电流强度足以在室温下诱导铁磁体的高效自旋转矩转换。我们通过三种独立的方法对这种自旋霍尔效应进行了量化，并展示了面外和面内磁化层的自旋转矩转换。我们还实现了一种三端器件，该器件利用通过钽 - 铁磁体双层的电流来切换一个纳米磁体，并带有一个磁性隧道结用于读出。这种简单、可靠且高效的设计可能会消除磁存储器和非易失性自旋逻辑技术发展的主要障碍。
Spin currents can apply useful torques in spintronic devices. The spin Hall effect has been proposed as a source of spin current, but its modest strength has limited its usefulness. We report a giant spin Hall effect (SHE) in beta-tantalum that generates spin currents intense enough to induce efficient spin-torque switching of ferromagnets at room temperature. We quantify this SHE by three independent methods and demonstrate spin-torque switching of both out-of-plane and in-plane magnetized layers. We furthermore implement a three-terminal device that uses current passing through a tantalum-ferromagnet bilayer to switch a nanomagnet, with a magnetic tunnel junction for read-out. This simple, reliable, and efficient design may eliminate the main obstacles to the development of magnetic memory and nonvolatile spin logic technologies.