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Tilted spin current generated by the collinear antiferromagnet ruthenium dioxide

Nature Electronics volume 5, pages 267–274 (2022)Cite this article

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An Author Correction to this article was published on 19 September 2022

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Abstract

Symmetry plays a central role in determining the polarization of spin currents induced by electric fields. It also influences how these spin currents generate spin-transfer torques in magnetic devices. Here we show that an out-of-plane damping-like torque can be generated in ruthenium dioxide (RuO2)/permalloy devices when the Néel vector of the collinear antiferromagnet RuO2 is canted relative to the sample plane. By measuring characteristic changes in all three components of the electric-field-induced torque vector as a function of the angle of the electric field relative to the crystal axes, we find that the RuO2 generates a spin current with a well-defined tilted spin orientation that is approximately parallel to the Néel vector. A maximum out-of-plane damping-like spin torque efficiency per unit electric field of 7 ± 1 × 103 Ω−1 m−1 is measured at room temperature. The observed angular dependence indicates that this is an antiferromagnetic spin Hall effect with symmetries that are distinct from other mechanisms of spin-current generation reported in antiferromagnetic and ferromagnetic materials.

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Fig. 1: Time-reversal-odd spin Hall conductivity in RuO2.
Fig. 2: Spin-torque ferromagnetic resonance and second-harmonic Hall measurements.
Fig. 3: Determination of the vector components of the damping-like torque.
Fig. 4: Comparison of RuO2 and IrO2 and the dependence of the torque from RuO2 on layer thickness and temperature.

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Data availability

All the data accompanying this work are available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6301100.

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Acknowledgements

We thank T. M. Cham for discussions. This research was supported by the US Department of Energy, DE-SC0017671 (R.J. and partial support for A.B.), the National Science Foundation (NSF) MRSEC programme through the Cornell Center for Materials Research, DMR-1719875 (X.S.Z. and partial support for A.B.), the NSF Platform for the Accelerated Realization, Analysis and Discovery of Interface Materials (PARADIM) under cooperative agreement no. 2039380 (N.J.S., H.P.N., J.S. and D.G.S.), the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation’s EPiQS Initiative, grant GBMF9073 (D.G.S.), the NSF MRSEC programme, DMR-1420645 (D.-F.S.), and the NSF MRI programme, DMR-1429155 (X.Z.). The devices were fabricated using the shared facilities of the Cornell NanoScale Facility, a member of the National Nanotechnology Coordinated Infrastructure (supported by the NSF, NNCI-2025233) and the facilities of Cornell Center for Materials Research.

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Arnab Bose, Nathaniel J. Schreiber, Rakshit Jain.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Applied and Engineering Physics, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA

    Arnab Bose, Rakshit Jain, Xiyue S. Zhang & David A. Muller

  2. Department of Physics, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA

    Arnab Bose, Rakshit Jain & Daniel C. Ralph

  3. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA

    Nathaniel J. Schreiber, Hari P. Nair, Jiaxin Sun & Darrell G. Schlom

  4. Department of Physics and Astronomy & Nebraska Center for Materials and Nanoscience, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE, USA

    Ding-Fu Shao & Evgeny Y. Tsymbal

  5. Kavli Institute at Cornell for NanoScale Science, Ithaca, NY, USA

    David A. Muller, Darrell G. Schlom & Daniel C. Ralph

  6. Leibniz-Institut für Kristallzüchtung, Berlin, Germany

    Darrell G. Schlom

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Contributions

A.B. played the primary role in sample fabrication and, together with R.J., led the spin-torque measurements and data analysis, supervised by D.C.R. N.J.S., H.P.N. and J.S. grew the RuO2 and IrO2 films, supervised by D.G.S. D.-F.S. performed the DFT calculations, supervised by E.Y.T. X.S.Z. performed STEM imaging, supervised by D.A.M. A.B., R.J. and D.C.R. led the writing of the manuscript, with participation by all of the authors.

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Correspondence to Daniel C. Ralph.

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Nature Electronics thanks Feng Pan and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary Figs. 1–6, Discussion and Tables 1 and 2.

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Bose, A., Schreiber, N.J., Jain, R. et al. Tilted spin current generated by the collinear antiferromagnet ruthenium dioxide. Nat Electron 5, 267–274 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41928-022-00744-8

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