Quantifying interface and bulk contributions to spin–orbit torque in magnetic bilayers

Xin Fan, Halise Celik, Jun Wu, Chaoying Ni, Kyung-Jin Lee, Virginia O. Lorenz and John Q. Xiao ()
Additional contact information
Xin Fan: University of Delaware
Halise Celik: University of Delaware
Jun Wu: University of Delaware
Chaoying Ni: University of Delaware
Kyung-Jin Lee: Korea University
Virginia O. Lorenz: University of Delaware
John Q. Xiao: University of Delaware

Nature Communications, 2014, vol. 5, issue 1, 1-8

Abstract: Abstract Spin–orbit interaction-driven phenomena such as the spin Hall and Rashba effect in ferromagnetic/heavy metal bilayers enables efficient manipulation of the magnetization via electric current. However, the underlying mechanism for the spin–orbit interaction-driven phenomena remains unsettled. Here we develop a sensitive spin–orbit torque magnetometer based on the magneto-optic Kerr effect that measures the spin–orbit torque vectors for cobalt iron boron/platinum bilayers over a wide thickness range. We observe that the Slonczewski-like torque inversely scales with the ferromagnet thickness, and the field-like torque has a threshold effect that appears only when the ferromagnetic layer is thinner than 1 nm. Through a thickness-dependence study with an additional copper insertion layer at the interface, we conclude that the dominant mechanism for the spin–orbit interaction-driven phenomena in this system is the spin Hall effect. However, there is also a distinct interface contribution, which may be because of the Rashba effect.

Date: 2014
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms4042 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:5:y:2014:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms4042

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/ncomms4042

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().