Effective strain manipulation of the antiferromagnetic state of polycrystalline NiO

A. Barra, A. Ross, Olena Gomonay, L. Baldrati, A. Chavez, R. Lebrun, J. D. Schneider, P. Shirazi, Q. Wang, J. Sinova, G. P. Carman, Mathias Kläui

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

8 Scopus citations

Abstract

As a candidate material for applications such as magnetic memory, polycrystalline antiferromagnets offer the same robustness to external magnetic fields, THz spin dynamics, and lack of stray fields as their single crystalline counterparts, but without the limitation of epitaxial growth and lattice matched substrates. Here, we first report the detection of the average Néel vector orientation in polycrystalline NiO via spin Hall magnetoresistance (SMR). Second, by applying strain through a piezo-electric substrate, we reduce the critical magnetic field required to reach a saturation of the SMR signal, indicating a change of the anisotropy. Our results are consistent with polycrystalline NiO exhibiting a positive sign of the in-plane magnetostriction. This method of anisotropy-tuning offers an energy efficient, on-chip alternative to manipulate a polycrystalline antiferromagnet's magnetic state.
Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)172408
JournalApplied Physics Letters
Volume118
Issue number17
DOIs
StatePublished - Apr 27 2021
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

KAUST Repository Item: Exported on 2022-06-15
Acknowledged KAUST grant number(s): OSR-2019-CRG8–4048.2
Acknowledgements: This material is based upon work supported by or, in part, by the U.S. Army Research Laboratory and the U.S. Army Research Office under Grant No. W911NF-17–0364. A.B., A.C., J.S., P.S., Q.W, and G.C. are also supported by the NSF Nanosystems Engineering Research Center for Translational Applications of Nanoscale Multiferroic Systems under the Cooperative Agreement Grant No. EEC-1160504. A.R. and M.K. acknowledge support from the Graduate School of Excellence Materials Science in Mainz (No. DFG/GSC 266) and support from the DFG Project No. 423441604. L.B. acknowledges the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Grant Agreement ARTES No. 793159. The authors from Mainz also acknowledge support from MaHoJeRo (DAAD Spintronics network, Project No. 57334897), SPIN+X (No. DFG SFB TRR 173–268565370) (Projects A01, A03, A11, B02, B11, and B12), and KAUST (No. OSR-2019-CRG8–4048.2). R.L. and M.K. acknowledge financial support from the Horizon 2020 Framework Programme of the 328 European Commission under FET-Open Grant Agreement 329 No. 863155 (s-Nebula). This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under Grant Agreement No. 860060 (ITN MagnEFi). O.G. and J. Sinova acknowledge the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the ERC Synergy Grant SC2 (No. 610115). O.G. acknowledges support from DFG within the Project No. SHARP 397322108. This work was supported by the Max Planck Graduate Center with the Johannes Gutenberg-Universit€at Mainz (MPGC). M.K. was supported by the Research Council of Norway through its Centres of Excellence funding scheme, Project No. 262633 “QuSpin.”
This publication acknowledges KAUST support, but has no KAUST affiliated authors.

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Physics and Astronomy (miscellaneous)

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