Detrimental Effect of Interfacial Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya Interaction on Perpendicular Spin-Transfer-Torque Magnetic Random Access Memory

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates through numerical analysis that interfacial Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction negatively impacts perpendicular spin-transfer-torque magnetic random access memory by reducing thermal stability and increasing switching current, thus hindering commercialization.

Contribution

It is the first study to quantify the detrimental effects of interfacial Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction on spin torque memory performance.

Findings

Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction decreases thermal energy barrier.

It increases the switching current required for magnetization reversal.

Minimizing Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction is beneficial for memory stability.

Abstract

Interfacial Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction in ferromagnet/heavy metal bilayers is recently of considerable interest as it offers an efficient control of domain walls and the stabilization of magnetic skyrmions. However, its effect on the performance of perpendicular spin transfer torque memory has not been explored yet. We show based on numerical studies that the interfacial Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction decreases the thermal energy barrier while increases the switching current. As high thermal energy barrier as well as low switching current is required for the commercialization of spin torque memory, our results suggest that the interfacial Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction should be minimized for spin torque memory applications.