Current induced magnetization switching in PtCoCr structures with enhanced perpendicular magnetic anisotropy and spin-orbit torques

TL;DR

This study demonstrates that Pt/Co/Cr trilayers exhibit enhanced perpendicular magnetic anisotropy and efficient spin-orbit torques, with potential applications in nonvolatile magnetic memory devices, by systematically analyzing the effects of Cr thickness.

Contribution

It reveals how Cr thickness influences PMA and SOTs, showing that Cr can be used to engineer interfaces for improved magnetic device performance.

Findings

Enhanced perpendicular anisotropy field of ~10189 Oe observed.

Effective spin Hall angle up to 0.19 measured.

Spin Hall angle correlates linearly with resistivity, indicating extrinsic skew scattering.

Abstract

Magnetic trilayers having large perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA) and high spin-orbit torques (SOTs) efficiency are the key to fabricate nonvolatile magnetic memory and logic devices. In this work, PMA and SOTs are systematically studied in Pt/Co/Cr stacks as a function of Cr thickness. An enhanced perpendicular anisotropy field around 10189 Oe is obtained and is related to the interface between Co and Cr layers. In addition, an effective spin Hall angle up to 0.19 is observed due to the improved antidamping-like torque by employing dissimilar metals Pt and Cr with opposite signs of spin Hall angles on opposite sides of Co layer. Finally, we observed a nearly linear dependence between spin Hall angle and longitudinal resistivity from their temperature dependent properties, suggesting that the spin Hall effect may arise from extrinsic skew scattering mechanism. Our results indicate that 3d transition metal Cr with a large negative spin Hall angle could be used to engineer the interfaces of trilayers to enhance PMA and SOTs.