Current-induced reversal in magnetic nanopillars passivated by silicon

TL;DR

This study shows that silicon passivation effectively protects magnetic nanopillars from oxidation, influencing their switching behavior and providing a simple method to assess device quality at low temperatures.

Contribution

It introduces silicon coating as a protective layer for magnetic nanopillars and analyzes its effects on switching behavior and device diagnostics.

Findings

Oxidized nanopillars show increased reversal current at cryogenic temperatures.

Oxidation causes anomalous switching statistics at low temperatures.

Silicon passivation prevents oxidation and alters magnetic switching characteristics.

Abstract

We demonstrate that magnetic multilayer nanopillars can be efficiently protected from oxidation by coating with silicon. Both the protected and the oxidized nanopillars exhibit an increase of reversal current at cryogenic temperatures. However the magnetic excitation onset current increases only in the oxidized samples. We show that oxidized nanopillars exhibit anomalous switching statistics at low temperature, providing a simple test for the quality of magnetic nanodevices.