Impact of Anisotropy on the Magnetic Hysteresis of Magnetic Tunnel Junction Based Molecular Spintronics Device (MTJMSD) Properties

Abstract

Abstract Body: Molecular Spintronics devices (MSD), which possess tunable spin states, are crucial for the advancement of futuristic quantum computing technology [1]. To overcome the dominant issue of reliable mass producibility for existing MSD technology, we have designed a magnetic tunnel junction based molecular spintronics device (MTJMSD). MTJMSD is fabricated by bridging paramagnetic molecules across the edges of the ferromagnetic electrodes to create spin channels. MTJMSD enables the utilization of ferromagnetic electrodes with a wide range of magnetic anisotropies. There is a knowledge gap about the role of magnetic anisotropy on the magnetic swicthing mechanism and equilibrium magnetic prperties of the MTJMSDs. Understanding the role of anisotropy is crucial to apply this technology in futuristic spin valve type memory device applications. In this study we investigated the effect of anisotropy on the nature of the hysteresis curves generated computationally using Monte Carlo Simulations (MCS). We applied the in-plane magnetic anisotropy () along the ferromagnetic electrode of a magnetic tunnel junction. The magnitude of A varied numerically from 0 to1. A=1 represented strong anisotropy of the order of interatomic Heisenberg exchange on the ferromagnetic electrodes. We also varied the thermal energy of the device from = 0.05 to 1.1. Here, = 0.1 corresponds to the operating temperature ranges from 500C to 900C with the assumption that the Curie temperature of the device lies between 5000C to 9000C. The effect of the anisotropy transformed the regular magnetic hysteresis of MTJMSD into a “wasp-waisted” -like hysteresis curve[2]. The “wasp-waisted” -like hysteresis curve is hypothesized due to the presence of multiple magnetic phases present on the ferromagnetic electrodes caused by strong magnetic anisotropy. Here, the materials possess hard and soft magnetic phases due to the higher and lower values of coercive fields. The “wasp-waisted” -like hysteresis curve was observed relatively at lower magnitudes of anisotropy at low thermal energy. The effect was observed up to = 0.8 with the high magnitude magnetic anisotropy ( 0.9). As a result, the effect of anisotropy keeps high magnetization of the device close to Curie temperature even when all the coupling effects get nullified due to thermal agitation. This research is supported by National Science Foundation-CREST Award (Contract # HRD- 1914751), Department of Energy/ National Nuclear Security Agency (DE-FOA-0003945).