Perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA) plays a critical role in the development of spintronics, thereby demanding new strategies to control PMA. Here we demonstrate a conceptually new type of interface induced PMA that is controlled by oxygen octahedral rotation. In superlattices comprised of La1−xSrxMnO3 and SrIrO3, we find that all superlattices (0≤x ≤1) exhibit ferromagnetism despite the fact that La1−xSrxMnO3 is antiferromagnetic for x >0.5. PMA as high as 4×10 6 erg/cm 3 is observed by increasing x and attributed to a decrease of oxygen octahedral rotation at interfaces. We also demonstrate that oxygen octahedral deformation cannot explain the trend in PMA. These results reveal a new degree of freedom to control PMA, enabling discovery of emergent magnetic textures and topological phenomena.
Pure spin currents, unaccompanied by dissipative charge flow, are essential for realizing energy-efficient nanomagnetic information and communications devices. Thin-film magnetic insulators have been identified as promising materials for spin-current technology because they are thought to exhibit lower damping compared with their metallic counterparts. However, insulating behavior is not a sufficient requirement for low damping, as evidenced by the very limited options for low-damping insulators. Here, we demonstrate a new class of nanometer-thick ultralow-damping insulating thin films based on design criteria that minimize orbital angular momentum and structural disorder. Specifically, we show ultralow damping in <20 nm thick spinel-structure magnesium aluminum ferrite (MAFO), in which magnetization arises from Fe ions with zero orbital angular momentum. These epitaxial MAFO thin films exhibit a Gilbert damping parameter of ∼0.0015 and negligible inhomogeneous linewidth broadening, resulting in narrow half width at half-maximum linewidths of ∼0.6 mT around 10 GHz. Our findings offer an attractive thin-film platform for enabling integrated insulating spintronics.
Electric fields can transform materials with respect to their structure and properties, enabling various applications ranging from batteries to spintronics. Recently electrolytic gating, which can generate large electric fields and voltage-driven ion transfer, has been identified as a powerful means to achieve electric-field-controlled phase transformations. The class of transition metal oxides (TMOs) provide many potential candidates that present a strong response under electrolytic gating. However, very few show a reversible structural transformation at roomtemperature. Here, we report the realization of a digitally synthesized TMO that shows a reversible, electric-field-controlled transformation between distinct crystalline phases at room-temperature. In superlattices comprised of alternating one-unit-cell of SrIrO 3 and La 0.2 Sr 0.8 MnO 3 , we find a reversible phase transformation with a 7% lattice change and dramatic modulation in chemical, electronic, magnetic and optical properties, mediated by the reversible transfer of oxygen and hydrogen ions. Strikingly, this phase transformation is absent in the constituent oxides, solid solutions and larger period superlattices. Our findings open up a new class of materials for voltagecontrolled functionality.
The anomalous Hall, Nernst, and thermal Hall coefficients of the itinerant ferromagnet Fe 3−x GeTe 2 display anomalies upon cooling that are consistent with a topological transition that could induce deviations with respect to the Wiedemann-Franz (WF) law. This law has not yet been validated for the anomalous transport variables, with recent experimental studies yielding material-dependent results. Nevertheless, the anomalous Hall and thermal Hall coefficients of Fe 3−x GeTe 2 are found, within our experimental accuracy, to satisfy the WF law for magnetic-fields µ 0 H applied along its c-axis. Remarkably, large anomalous transport is also observed for µ 0 H a-axis with the field aligned along the gradient of the chemical potential generated by thermal gradients or electrical currents, a configuration that should not lead to their observation. These anomalous planar quantities are found to not scale with the component of the planar magnetization (M ), showing instead a sharp decrease beyond µ 0 H = 4 T or the field required to align the magnetic moments along µ 0 H . We argue that chiral spin structures associated with Bloch domain walls lead to a field dependent spin-chirality that produces a novel type of topological transport in the absence of interaction between the magnetic field and electrical or thermal currents. Locally chiral spin-structures are captured by our Monte-Carlo simulations incorporating small Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya and biquadratic exchange interactions. These observations reveal not only a new way to detect and expose topological excitations, but also a new configuration for heat conversion that expands the current technological horizon for thermoelectric energy applications.
Perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA) has recently been shown to emerge at interfaces of 3d and 5d transition-metal oxides (TMOs). However, strategies to systematically stabilize such interface-driven PMA still remains elusive, hindering further applications of this design approach. Here, tuning crystal symmetry is shown to be an effective means to engineer this interfacial phenomenon. The evolution of PMA strength as a function of ferromagnetic oxide thickness quantitatively reveals the competition between volume-and interface-specific contributions that determine the magnetic anisotropy. By applying different degrees of epitaxial strain, the relative contributions to PMA are modulated, clearly revealing their correlations with crystal symmetries. To be more specific, the volume anisotropy energy is found to be correlated with the tetragonal distortion of the ferromagnetic layer, while the interface anisotropy energy is mainly modulated by the octahedral tilting at the interface. With these insights, superlattices with enhanced interface-driven PMA and higher Curie temperature are realized. These findings reveal a route to engineering interface-driven PMA and associated magnetic phenomena in TMO heterostructures for future spintronic applications.
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