Scientists develop the next generation of highly efficient memory materials with atom-level control

Phys.org  June 27, 2024
Recently a single-phase material concurrently exhibiting magnetism and the spin Hall effect has emerged as a scientifically and technologically interesting platform for realizing efficient and compact spin–orbit torque (SOT) systems. Researchers in South Korea demonstrated external-magnetic-field-free switching of perpendicular magnetization in a single-phase ferromagnetic and spin Hall oxide SrRuO3 by delicately altering the local lattices of the top and bottom surface layers of SrRuO3, while retaining a quasi-homogeneous, single-crystalline nature of the SrRuO3 bulk. This led to unbalanced spin Hall effects between the top and bottom layers. SrRuO3 exhibited the highest SOT efficiency and lowest power consumption among all known single-layer systems under field-free conditions. According to the researchers their method of artificially manipulating the local atomic structures will pave the way for advances in spin-orbitronics and the exploration of new SOT materials… read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE