No Arabic abstract
Charge transfer is of particular importance in manipulating the interface physics in transition-metal oxide heterostructures. In this work, we have fabricated epitaxial bilayers composed of polar 3d LaMnO3 and nonpolar 5d SrIrO3. Systematic magnetic measurements reveal an unexpectedly large exchange bias effect in the bilayer, together with a dramatic enhancement of the coercivity of LaMnO3. Based on first-principles calculations and x-ray absorption spectroscopy measurements, such a strong interfacial magnetic coupling is found closely associated with the polar nature of LaMnO3 and the strong spin-orbit interaction in SrIrO3, which collectively drives an asymmetric interfacial charge transfer and leads to the emergence of an interfacial spin glass state. Our study provides new insight into the charge transfer in transition-metal oxide heterostructures and offers a novel means to tune the interfacial exchange coupling for a variety of device applications.
In bilayer systems consisting of an ultrathin ferromagnetic layer adjacent to a metal with strong spin-orbit coupling, an applied in-plane current induces torques on the magnetization. The torques that arise from spin-orbit coupling are of particular interest. Here, we calculate the current-induced torque in a Pt-Co bilayer to help determine the underlying mechanism using first principles methods. We focus exclusively on the analogue to the Rashba torque, and do not consider the spin Hall effect. The details of the torque depend strongly on the layer thicknesses and the interface structure, providing an explanation for the wide variation in results found by different groups. The torque depends on the magnetization direction in a way similar to that found for a simple Rashba model. Artificially turning off the exchange spin splitting and separately the spin-orbit coupling potential in the Pt shows that the primary source of the field-like torque is a proximate spin-orbit effect on the Co layer induced by the strong spin-orbit coupling in the Pt.
Spin-charge interconversion in systems with spin-orbit coupling has provided a new route for the generation and detection of spin currents in functional devices for memory and logic such as spin-orbit torque switching in magnetic memories or magnetic state reading in spin-based logic. Disentangling the bulk (spin Hall effect) from the interfacial (inverse spin galvanic effect) contribution has been a common issue to properly quantify the spin-charge interconversion in these systems, being the case of Au paradigmatic. Here, we obtain a large spin-charge interconversion at a highly conducting Au/Cu interface which is experimentally shown to arise from the inverse spin galvanic effect of the interface and not from the spin Hall effect of bulk Au. We use two parameters independent of the microscopic details to properly quantify the spin-charge interconversion and the spin losses due to the interfacial spin-orbit coupling, providing an adequate benchmarking to compare with any spin-charge interconversion system. The good performance of this metallic interface, not based in Bi, opens the path to the use of much simpler light/heavy metal systems.
Tailoring spin-orbit interactions and Coulomb repulsion are the key features to observe exotic physical phenomena such as magnetic anisotropy and topological spin texture at oxide interfaces. Our study proposes a novel platform for engineering the magnetism and spin-orbit coupling at LaMnO3/SrIrO3 (3d-5d oxide) interfaces by tuning the LaMnO3 growth conditions which controls the lattice displacement and spin-correlated interfacial coupling through charge transfer. We report on a tunable and enhanced interface-induced Rashba spin-orbit coupling and Elliot-Yafet spin relaxation mechanism in LaMnO3/SrIrO3 bilayer with change in the underlying magnetic order of LaMnO3. We also observed enhanced spin-orbit coupling strength in LaMnO3/SrIrO3 compared to previously reported SrIrO3 layers. The X-Ray spectroscopy measurement reveals the quantitative valence of Mn and their impact on charge transfer. Further, we performed angle-dependent magnetoresistance measurements, which show signatures of magnetic proximity effect in SrIrO3 while reflecting the magnetic order of LaMnO3. Our work thus demonstrates a new route to engineer the interface induced Rashba spin-orbit coupling and magnetic proximity effect in 3d-5d oxide interfaces which makes SrIrO3 an ideal candidate for spintronics applications.
Charge transfer in superlattices consisting of SrIrO$_3$ and SrMnO$_3$ is investigated using density functional theory. Despite the nearly identical work function and non-polar interfaces between SrIrO$_3$ and SrMnO$_3$, rather large charge transfer was experimentally reported at the interface between them. Here, we report a microscopic model that captures the mechanism behind this phenomenon, providing a qualitative understanding of the experimental observation. This leads to unique strain dependence of such charge transfer in iridate-manganite superlattices. The predicted behavior is consistently verified by experiment with soft x-ray and optical spectroscopy. Our work thus demonstrates a new route to control electronic states in non-polar oxide heterostructures.
It has recently been recognized that the strong spin-orbit interaction present in solids can lead to new phenomena, such as materials with non-trivial topological order. Although the atomic spin-orbit coupling in carbon is weak, the spin-orbit coupling in carbon nanotubes can be significant due to their curved surface. Previous works have reported spin-orbit couplings in reasonable agreement with theory, and this coupling strength has formed the basis of a large number of theoretical proposals. Here we report a spin-orbit coupling in three carbon nanotube devices that is an order of magnitude larger than measured before. We find a zero-field spin splitting of up to 3.4 meV, corresponding to a built-in effective magnetic field of 29 T aligned along the nanotube axis. While the origin of the large spin-orbit coupling is not explained by existing theories, its strength is promising for applications of the spin-orbit interaction in carbon nanotubes devices.