Symmetry broken spin reorientation transition in epitaxial MgO/Fe/MgO layers with competing anisotropies

Abstract The observation of perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA) at MgO/Fe interfaces boosted the development of spintronic devices based on ultrathin ferromagnetic layers. Yet, magnetization reversal in the standard magnetic tunnel junctions (MTJs) with competing PMA and in-plane anisotropies re...

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Autores principales: Isidoro Martínez, Coriolan Tiusan, Michel Hehn, Mairbek Chshiev, Farkhad G. Aliev
Formato: article
Lenguaje:EN
Publicado: Nature Portfolio 2018
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Acceso en línea:https://doaj.org/article/51b9e2e496f542d695c1db141b0d3b89
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Sumario:Abstract The observation of perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA) at MgO/Fe interfaces boosted the development of spintronic devices based on ultrathin ferromagnetic layers. Yet, magnetization reversal in the standard magnetic tunnel junctions (MTJs) with competing PMA and in-plane anisotropies remains unclear. Here we report on the field induced nonvolatile broken symmetry magnetization reorientation transition from the in-plane to the perpendicular (out of plane) state at temperatures below 50 K. The samples were 10 nm thick Fe in MgO/Fe(100)/MgO as stacking components of V/MgO/Fe/MgO/Fe/Co double barrier MTJs with an area of 20 × 20 μm2. Micromagnetic simulations with PMA and different second order anisotropies at the opposite Fe/MgO interfaces qualitatively reproduce the observed broken symmetry spin reorientation transition. Our findings open the possibilities to develop multistate epitaxial spintronics based on competing magnetic anisotropies.