Soliton-Mediated Magnetic Reversal in an All-Oxide-Based Synthetic Antiferromagnetic Superlattice

Kexuan Zhang; Kirill Zhernenkov; Thomas Saerbeck; Artur Glavic; Lili Qu; Christy J Kinane; Andrew J Caruana; Enda Hua; Guanyin Gao; Feng Jin; Binghui Ge; Feng Cheng; Sabine Pütter; Alexandros Koutsioubas; Stefan Mattauch; Thomas Brueckel; Yixi Su; Lingfei Wang; Wenbin Wu

doi:10.1021/acsami.1c02506

Soliton-Mediated Magnetic Reversal in an All-Oxide-Based Synthetic Antiferromagnetic Superlattice

ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2021 May 5;13(17):20788-20795. doi: 10.1021/acsami.1c02506. Epub 2021 Apr 20.

Authors

Kexuan Zhang^{1

2}, Kirill Zhernenkov², Thomas Saerbeck³, Artur Glavic⁴, Lili Qu¹, Christy J Kinane⁵, Andrew J Caruana⁵, Enda Hua¹, Guanyin Gao¹, Feng Jin¹, Binghui Ge⁶, Feng Cheng⁶, Sabine Pütter², Alexandros Koutsioubas², Stefan Mattauch², Thomas Brueckel⁷, Yixi Su², Lingfei Wang¹, Wenbin Wu^{1

8}

Affiliations

¹ Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at Microscale, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, China.
² Jülich Centre for Neutron Science JCNS at Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Zentrum, Forschungszentrum Jülich, Lichtenbergstr. 1, D-85747 Garching, Germany.
³ Institut Laue-Langevin, 71 Avenue des Martyrs, CS 20156, 38042 Grenoble Cedex 9, France.
⁴ Laboratory for Neutron and Muon Instrumentation, Paul Scherrer Institut, 5232 Villigen PSI, Switzerland.
⁵ ISIS Neutron and Muon Source, Science and Technology Facilities Council, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Harwell Oxford, Didcot OX11 0QX, United Kingdom.
⁶ Institutes of Physical Science and Information Technology, Anhui University, Hefei 230601, China.
⁷ Jülich Centre for Neutron Science (JCNS-2) and Peter Grünberg Institute (PGI-4), Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, 52425 Jülich, Germany.
⁸ Anhui Key Laboratory of Condensed Matter Physics at Extreme Conditions, High Magnetic Field Laboratory, HFIPS, Anhui, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei 230031, China.

PMID: 33877796
DOI: 10.1021/acsami.1c02506

Abstract

All-oxide-based synthetic antiferromagnets (SAFs) are attracting intense research interest due to their superior tunability and great potentials for antiferromagnetic spintronic devices. In this work, using the La_2/3Ca_1/3MnO₃/CaRu_1/2Ti_1/2O₃ (LCMO/CRTO) superlattice as a model SAF, we investigated the layer-resolved magnetic reversal mechanism by polarized neutron reflectivity. We found that the reversal of LCMO layer moments is mediated by nucleation, expansion, and shrinkage of a magnetic soliton. This unique magnetic reversal process creates a reversed magnetic configuration of the SAF after a simple field cycling. Therefore, it can enable vertical data transfer from the bottom to the top of the superlattice. The physical origin of this intriguing magnetic reversal process could be attributed to the cooperation of the surface spin-flop effect and enhanced uniaxial magnetic anisotropy of the bottom LCMO layer. This work may pave a way to utilize all-oxide-based SAFs for three-dimensional spintronic devices with vertical data transfer and high-density data storage.

Keywords: in-plane anisotropy; interlayer exchange coupling; magnetic thin films; neutron scattering; oxide superlattices; polarized neutron reflectivity; synthetic antiferromagnets.