Large inverse spin Hall effect in BiSb topological insulator for 4 Tb/in2 magnetic recording technology

Abstract

It is technically challenging to shrink the size of a tunneling magnetoresistance reader to below 20 nm for magnetic recording technology beyond 4 Tb/in2 due to its complex film stack. Recently, we proposed a reader architecture based on the inverse spin Hall effect to resolve those challenges, referred below as spin–orbit torque (SOT) reader, whose structure consists of a SOT layer and a ferromagnetic layer. However, the heavy metal-based SOT reader has small output voltage and low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) due to the limited spin Hall angle θSH (< 1) of heavy metals. In this Letter, we demonstrate the integration of BiSb topological insulator with strong inverse spin Hall effect into the SOT reader that can significantly improve the output voltage and SNR. First, we theoretically calculate the noises in a 20 × 20 nm2 BiSb-based SOT reader to establish the relationships between SNR and θSH at various bias currents. We then demonstrate proof-of-concept BiSb-based SOT readers using CoFe/MgO/BiSb stack, which show large output voltages up to 15 mV at an input current of 9.4 kA/cm2 at room temperature. We project a giant θSH = 61 for BiSb. Our work demonstrates the potential of BiSb for SOT reader beyond 4 Tb/in2 magnetic recording technology.