Low-Energy Switching of Antiferromagnetic CuMnAs/ GaP Using sub-10 Nanosecond Current Pulses

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates low-energy, highly reproducible antiferromagnetic switching of CuMnAs/GaP using sub-10 nanosecond pulses, highlighting potential for fast, energy-efficient spintronic memory devices.

Contribution

It introduces nanosecond pulse switching of CuMnAs/GaP, expanding the operational regime and comparing two switching methods for future memory applications.

Findings

Successful switching with sub-10 nanosecond pulses

High readout signal with reproducibility

Distinct behaviors of orthogonal and polarity switching

Abstract

The recently discovered electrical-induced switching of antiferromagnetic (AF) materials that have spatial inversion asymmetry has enriched the field of spintronics immensely and opened the door for the concept of antiferromagnetic MRAM. CuMnAs is one promising AF material that exhibits such electrical switching ability, and has been studied to switch using electrical pulses of length millisecond down to picosecond, but with little focus on nanosecond regime. We demonstrate here switching of CuMnAs/GaP using nanosecond pulses. Our results showed that in the nanosecond regime low-energy switching, high readout signal with highly reproducible behaviour down to a single pulse can be achieved. Moreover, a comparison of the two switching methods of orthogonal switching and polarity switching was done on same device showing two different behaviours that can be exploited selectively for different future memory/processing applications.