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Piezoelectric control of the mobility of a domain wall driven by adiabatic and non-adiabatic torques

Nature Materials volume 12, pages 808–814 (2013)Cite this article

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Abstract

The rich internal degrees of freedom of magnetic domain walls make them an attractive complement to electron charge for exploring new concepts of storage, transport and processing of information. Here we use the tunable internal structure of a domain wall in a perpendicularly magnetized GaMnAsP/GaAs ferromagnetic semiconductor and demonstrate devices in which piezoelectrically controlled magnetic anisotropy yields up to 500% mobility variations for an electrical-current-driven domain wall. We observe current-induced domain wall motion over a wide range of current-pulse amplitudes and report a direct observation and the piezoelectric control of the Walker breakdown separating two regimes with different mobilities. Our work demonstrates that in spin–orbit-coupled ferromagnets with weak extrinsic domain wall pinning, the piezoelectric control allows one to experimentally assess the upper and lower boundaries of the characteristic ratio of adiabatic and non-adiabatic spin-transfer torques in the current-driven domain wall motion.

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Figure 1: DW propagation in piezo-strain-controlled magnetic microbars.
Figure 2: Current-induced DW motion controlled by in-plane magnetic anisotropy.
Figure 3: Piezoelectric control of in-plane magnetic anisotropy.
Figure 4: Piezoelectric control of current-and magnetic-field-driven DW motion.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge support from EU grants ERC Advanced Grant 268066-0MSPIN and FP7-215368 SemiSpinNet, and from Czech Republic grant Praemium Academiae, from the Ministry of Education of the Czech Republic, Grant No. LM2011026.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Hitachi Cambridge Laboratory, JJ Thomson Avenue, Cambridge CB3 0HE, UK

    E. De Ranieri, P. E. Roy, D. Fang & J. Wunderlich

  2. Microelectronics Group, Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge, JJ Thomson Avenue, Cambridge CB3 0HE, UK

    D. Fang, A. C. Irvine & D. Heiss

  3. Institute of Physics ASCR, v.v.i., Cukrovarnická 10, 162 53 Praha 6, Czech Republic

    E. K. Vehsthedt, T. Jungwirth & J. Wunderlich

  4. Department of Physics, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas 77843-4242, USA

    E. K. Vehsthedt

  5. School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Nottingham, Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK

    A. Casiraghi, R. P. Campion, B. L. Gallagher & T. Jungwirth

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  1. E. De Ranieri
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Contributions

E.D.R., J.W., P.E.R. and E.K.V. developed the experimental set-up, and performed the measurements. P.E.R., T.J., J.W. and E.D.R. performed the theoretical analysis and modelling. R.P.C. and B.L.G. grew and supplied the GaMnAsP films. E.D.R., A.C.I., D.H., E.K.V. and J.W. designed and fabricated the devices. E.D.R., D.F. and A.C. characterized the magnetic properties of the DW devices and unpatterned films. T.J., J.W., E.D.R. and P.E.R. wrote the paper. J.W., E.D.R. and P.E.R. planned the project. All authors discussed the results and contributed to the manuscript.

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Correspondence to J. Wunderlich.

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De Ranieri, E., Roy, P., Fang, D. et al. Piezoelectric control of the mobility of a domain wall driven by adiabatic and non-adiabatic torques. Nature Mater 12, 808–814 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat3657

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