No Arabic abstract
Spin-polarized electric current exerts torque on local magnetic spins, resulting in magnetic domain-wall (DW) motion in ferromagnetic nanowires. Such current-driven DW motion opens great opportunities toward next-generation magnetic devices controlled by current instead of magnetic field. However, the nature of the current-driven DW motion--considered qualitatively different from magnetic-field-driven DW motion--remains yet unclear mainly due to the painfully high operation current densities J_OP, which introduce uncontrollable experimental artefacts with serious Joule heating. It is also crucial to reduce J_OP for practical device operation. By use of metallic Pt/Co/Pt nanowires with perpendicular magnetic anisotropy, here we demonstrate DW motion at current densities down to the range of 10^9 A/m^2--two orders smaller than existing reports. Surprisingly the current-driven motion exhibits a scaling behaviour identical to the field-driven motion and thus, belongs to the same universality class despite their qualitative differences. Moreover all DW motions driven by either current or field (or by both) collapse onto a single curve, signalling the unification of the two driving mechanisms. The unified law manifests non-vanishing current efficiency at low current densities down to the practical level, applicable to emerging magnetic nanodevices.
In order to explain recent experiments reporting a motion of magnetic domain walls (DW) in nanowires carrying a current, we propose a modification of the spin transfer torque term in the Landau-Lifchitz-Gilbert equation. We show that it explains, with reasonable parameters, the measured DW velocities as well as the variation of DW propagation field under current. We also introduce coercivity by considering rough wires. This leads to a finite DW propagation field and finite threshold current for DW propagation, hence we conclude that threshold currents are extrinsic. Some possible models that support this new term are discussed.
Interactions between pairs of magnetic domain walls (DW) and pinning by radial constrictions were studied in cylindrical nanowires with surface roughness. It was found that a radial constriction creates a symmetric pinning potential well, with a change of slope when the DW is situated outside the notch. Surface deformation induces an asymmetry in the pinning potential as well as dynamical pinning. The depinning fields of the domain walls were found generally to decrease with increasing surface roughness. A DW pinned at a radial constriction creates a pinning potential well for a free DW in a parallel wire. We determined that trapped bound DW states appear above the depinning threshold and that the surface roughness facilitates the trapped bound DW states in parallel wires.
We investigated the aspect ratio (thickness/width) dependence of the threshold current density required for the current-driven domain wall (DW) motion for the Ni81Fe19 nanowires. It has been shown theoretically that the threshold current density is proportional to the product of the hard-axis magnetic anisotropy Kperp and the DW width lamda. (Phys. Rev. Lett. 92, 086601 (2004).) We show experimentally that Kperp can be controlled by the magnetic shape anisotropy in the case of the Ni81Fe19 nanowires, and that the threshold current density increases with an increase of Kperp*l. We succeeded to reduce the threshold current density by half by the shape control.
The influence of temperature on the magnetic-field-driven domain wall (DW) motion is investigated in GdFeCo ferrimagnets with perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA). We find that the depinning field strongly depends on temperature. Moreover, it is also found that the saturation magnetization exhibits a similar dependence on temperature to that of depinning field. From the creep-scaling criticality, a simple relation between the depinning field and the properties of PMA is clearly identified theoretically as well as experimentally. Our findings open a way for a better understanding how the magnetic properties influence on the depinning field in magnetic system and would be valuably extended to depinning studies in other system.
Current induced domain wall (DW) motion in perpendicularly magnetized nanostripes in the presence of spin orbit torques is studied. We show using micromagnetic simulations that the direction of the current induced DW motion and the associated DW velocity depend on the relative values of the field like torque (FLT) and the Slonczewski like torques (SLT). The results are well explained by a collective coordinate model which is used to draw a phase diagram of the DW dynamics as a function of the FLT and the SLT. We show that a large increase in the DW velocity can be reached by a proper tuning of both torques.