Nanosecond-Timescale Low Energy Switching of In-Plane Magnetic Tunnel Junctions through Dynamic Oersted-Field-Assisted Spin Hall Effect

We investigate fast-pulse switching of in-plane-magnetized magnetic tunnel junctions (MTJs) within 3-terminal devices in which spin-transfer torque is applied to the MTJ by the giant spin Hall effect. We measure reliable switching, with write error rates down to 10–5, using current pulses as short a...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nano letters 2016-10, Vol.16 (10), p.5987-5992
Main Authors: Aradhya, S. V, Rowlands, G. E, Oh, J, Ralph, D. C, Buhrman, R. A
Format: Article
Language:English
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Summary:We investigate fast-pulse switching of in-plane-magnetized magnetic tunnel junctions (MTJs) within 3-terminal devices in which spin-transfer torque is applied to the MTJ by the giant spin Hall effect. We measure reliable switching, with write error rates down to 10–5, using current pulses as short as just 2 ns in duration. This represents the fastest reliable switching reported to date for any spin-torque-driven magnetic memory geometry and corresponds to a characteristic time scale that is significantly shorter than predicted possible within a macrospin model for in-plane MTJs subject to thermal fluctuations at room temperature. Using micromagnetic simulations, we show that in the three-terminal spin-Hall devices the Oersted magnetic field generated by the pulse current strongly modifies the magnetic dynamics excited by the spin-Hall torque, enabling this unanticipated performance improvement. Our results suggest that in-plane MTJs controlled by Oersted-field-assisted spin-Hall torque are a promising candidate for both cache memory applications requiring high speed and for cryogenic memories requiring low write energies.
ISSN:1530-6984
1530-6992
DOI:10.1021/acs.nanolett.6b01443