Current polarity-dependent manipulation of antiferromagnetic domains
Status PubMed-not-MEDLINE Language English Country Great Britain, England Media print-electronic
Document type Journal Article, Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
PubMed
29531330
DOI
10.1038/s41565-018-0079-1
PII: 10.1038/s41565-018-0079-1
Knihovny.cz E-resources
- Publication type
- Journal Article MeSH
- Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't MeSH
Antiferromagnets have several favourable properties as active elements in spintronic devices, including ultra-fast dynamics, zero stray fields and insensitivity to external magnetic fields 1 . Tetragonal CuMnAs is a testbed system in which the antiferromagnetic order parameter can be switched reversibly at ambient conditions using electrical currents 2 . In previous experiments, orthogonal in-plane current pulses were used to induce 90° rotations of antiferromagnetic domains and demonstrate the operation of all-electrical memory bits in a multi-terminal geometry 3 . Here, we demonstrate that antiferromagnetic domain walls can be manipulated to realize stable and reproducible domain changes using only two electrical contacts. This is achieved by using the polarity of the current to switch the sign of the current-induced effective field acting on the antiferromagnetic sublattices. The resulting reversible domain and domain wall reconfigurations are imaged using X-ray magnetic linear dichroism microscopy, and can also be detected electrically. Switching by domain-wall motion can occur at much lower current densities than those needed for coherent domain switching.
1 Physikalisches Institut Georg August Universität Göttingen Göttingen Germany
Diamond Light Source Chilton Didcot UK
Hitachi Cambridge Laboratory Cambridge UK
Institute of Physics Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic Praha 6 Czech Republic
Institute of Physics Polish Academy of Sciences Warsaw Poland
School of Physics and Astronomy University of Nottingham Nottingham UK
References provided by Crossref.org
Nanoscale imaging and control of altermagnetism in MnTe
Antiferromagnetic half-skyrmions electrically generated and controlled at room temperature
Atomically sharp domain walls in an antiferromagnet
Defect-driven antiferromagnetic domain walls in CuMnAs films
Terahertz electrical writing speed in an antiferromagnetic memory