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Electric-field control of interfacial spin–orbit fields

Nature Electronics volume 1, pages 350–355 (2018)Cite this article

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Abstract

Current-induced spin–orbit magnetic fields, which arise in single-crystalline ferromagnets with broken inversion symmetry and in non-magnetic metal/ferromagnetic metal bilayers, produce spin–orbit torques that can be used to manipulate the magnetization of a ferromagnet. In single-crystalline Fe/GaAs (001) heterostructures, for example, interfacial spin–orbit magnetic fields emerge at the Fe/GaAs interface due to the lack of inversion symmetry. To develop low-power spin–orbit torque devices, it is important to have electric-field control over such spin–orbit magnetic fields. Here, we show that the current-induced spin–orbit magnetic fields at the Fe/GaAs (001) interface can be controlled with an electric field. In particular, by applying a gate voltage across the Fe/GaAs interface, the interfacial spin–orbit field vector acting on Fe can be robustly modulated via a change in the magnitude of the interfacial spin–orbit interaction. Our results illustrate that the electric field in a Schottky barrier is capable of modifying spin–orbit magnetic fields, an effect that could be used to develop spin–orbit torque devices with low power consumption.

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Fig. 1: Electric-field modulation of spin–orbit fields at the Fe/GaAs (001) interface.
Fig. 2: Electric-field modulation of induced spin–orbit fields measured by spin–orbit FMR.
Fig. 3: Gate-voltage dependence of in-plane induced spin–orbit fields.
Fig. 4: Tuning of in-plane induced spin–orbit fields.
Fig. 5: Gate voltage dependence of the out-of-plane induced spin–orbit fields.

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Acknowledgements

L.C. thanks M. Kammermeier, M. Buchner and C. Gorini for fruitful discussions. L.C. acknowledges support from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. This work was supported by the German Science Foundation (DFG) via grants SFB 689 and SFB 1277.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Experimental and Applied Physics, University of Regensburg, Regensburg, Germany

    L. Chen, M. Vogel, R. Islinger, M. Kronseder, D. Schuh, D. Bougeard, D. Weiss & C. H. Back

  2. Institute of Theoretical Physics, University of Regensburg, Regensburg, Germany

    M. Gmitra & J. Fabian

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  1. L. Chen
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Contributions

L.C. planned the study. L.C. and R.I. fabricated the devices. L.C. collected and analysed the data. M.K., D.S. and D.B. grew the samples. M.V. carried out the COMSOL simulations. M.G. and J.F. conducted first-principle calculations and provided theoretical input. L.C. wrote the manuscript with input from J.F., C.H.B. and D.W. All authors discussed the results.

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Correspondence to C. H. Back.

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Supplementary Notes 1–4 and Supplementary Figures 1–7

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Chen, L., Gmitra, M., Vogel, M. et al. Electric-field control of interfacial spin–orbit fields. Nat Electron 1, 350–355 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41928-018-0085-1

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