Journal
NATURE COMMUNICATIONS
Volume 14, Issue 1, Pages -Publisher
NATURE PORTFOLIO
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-41163-3
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This study presents a strategy to break the in-plane symmetry of Pt/Co heterostructures by designing the orientation of Burgers vectors of dislocations, enabling field-free SOT switching of perpendicular magnetization components.
Current induced spin-orbit torque (SOT) holds great promise for next generation magnetic-memory technology. Field-free SOT switching of perpendicular magnetization requires the breaking of in-plane symmetry, which can be artificially introduced by external magnetic field, exchange coupling or device asymmetry. Recently it has been shown that the exploitation of inherent crystal symmetry offers a simple and potentially efficient route towards field-free switching. However, applying this approach to the benchmark SOT materials such as ferromagnets and heavy metals is challenging. Here, we present a strategy to break the in-plane symmetry of Pt/Co heterostructures by designing the orientation of Burgers vectors of dislocations. We show that the lattice of Pt/Co is tilted by about 1.2 degrees when the Burgers vector has an out-of-plane component. Consequently, a tilted magnetic easy axis is induced and can be tuned from nearly in-plane to out-of-plane, enabling the field-free SOT switching of perpendicular magnetization components at room temperature with a relatively low current density (similar to 10(11)A/m(2)) and excellent stability (> 10(4) cycles). This strategy is expected to be applicable to engineer a wide range of symmetry-related functionalities for future electronic and magnetic devices.
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