SrTiO3 system

Abstract

While classical spintronics has traditionally relied on ferromagnetic metals as spin generators and spin detectors, spin-orbitronics exploits the interplay between charge and spin currents enabled by the spin-orbit coupling (SOC) in non-magnetic systems. The realization of magnetization switching induced by in-plane current injection in heavy metal/ferromagnetic heterostructures [1] has drawn increasing attention to spin-orbitronics, leading to the advent of spin-orbit torques magnetoresistive random access memories (SOT-MRAM). Compared to heavy metals, oxide 2D electron gases have emerged as alternative spin-orbitronics material systems. They benefit from an efficient spin-charge interconversion through the direct and inverse Edelstein effects, which appear at their interfaces where the broken inversion symmetry induces a Rashba SOC [1]. Recently, we have demonstrated an enhancement of the spin-to-charge conversion efficiency by two orders of magnitude in SrTiO3-based 2D gas compared to conventional heavy metals [2], along with a non-volatile electric-control of the spin-to-charge conversion [3]. While the sign and efficiency of the SOTs are fixed by the stack of materials in conventional SOT devices, achieving an electric-control of the mirror charge-to-spin conversion would be of great interest for developing reconfigurable SOT-MRAM and logic gates, offering the possibility of active manipulation of the torque by electric field for building new architectures.Here we report electric-field control of spin orbit torques with electrical remanence in a perpendicular ferromagnet - SrTiO3 system. Results are shown from a 1 µm wide Hall bar device made of a CoFeB ferromagnetic layer with perpendicular magnetization on top of a SrTiO3 substrate with a thin Ta insertion to protect the 2D electron gas at the interface (Figure 1). The perpendicular magnetization is achieved using an MgO capping layer that ensures high interfacial magnetic anisotropy along with compatibility for integration in magnetic tunnel junctions for SOT-MRAM. To modulate the 2D gas properties, voltage is applied to the devices via a back-gate. Non-volatile electric-field control of the sheet resistance is achieved with 1150% contrast (Figure 1c), with two switchable and remanent high and low resistivity states of the 2D electron gas. Spin-orbit torques effective fields are further measured using second harmonic Hall methods. A remanent electric-field control of the SOT efficiency is demonstrated, with inversion of the sign of the SOT anti-damping-like effective field (Figure 2). Anti-damping-like and field-like torque effective fields per 2D current density of 1.6 and 0.1 mT. A. cm-1 respectively are reached in the 2D gas low resistivity state. These results are consistent with a combination of both intrinsic modulation of the SOT efficiency together with extrinsic modulation due to the non-volatile electric-control of the current injection in the 2D gas. The non-volatile control of the SOT effective field is further evidenced in Figure 2b, which displays reproducible inversion of the SOT torques after initializing with negative or positive voltage pulses of ±130 V, opening the way to reconfigurable spin-orbit torque memory and logic gate architectures. **