A possibility is discussed of observing spin injection effect on the ferromagnet domain structure by means of resonant excitation of the domain wall oscillations by a spin-polarized ac injection current. The natural frequency of the domain wall oscillations in a thin ferromagnetic film with parallel anisotropy is calculated. Amplitude of the domain wall forced oscillations excited by the spin-polarized ac current is determined. Then effect of such oscillations on the current is considered and appearance of nonlinear phenomena such as rectification of the ac current and second harmonic generation is predicted.
We present experimental results on the displacement of a domain wall by injection of a dc current through the wall. The samples are 1 micron wide long stripes of a CoO/Co/Cu/NiFe classical spin valve structure. The stripes have been patterned by electron beam lithography. A neck has been defined at 1/3 of the total length of the stripe and is a pinning center for the domain walls, as shown by the steps of the giant magnetoresistance curves at intermediate levels (1/3 or 2/3) between the resistances corresponding to the parallel and antiparallel configurations. We show by electric transport measurements that, once a wall is trapped, it can be moved by injecting a dc current higher than a threshold current of the order of magnitude of 10^7 A/cm^2. We discuss the different possible origins of this effect, i.e. local magnetic field created by the current and/or spin transfer from spin polarized current.
We demonstrate from both simulation and experiment a simple scheme for selective injection of multiple domain walls in a magnetic nanowire. The structure consists of a side-contact misaligned Hall bar made of ferromagnet/heavy metal bilayers. The combination of current-induced spin-orbit torque and an external magnetic field allows for the formation of localized domains with specific magnetization direction and length, thereby creating domain walls in predetermined locations. With the side contacts at two sides misaligned for a distance that is comparable to the contact width, it is possible to create densely packed domains by simply applying current between different pairs of side contacts. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme is scalable to a large number of domains with its dimension limited only by the domain wall width.
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.
In this paper, a 3-terminal spin-transfer torque nano-oscillator (STNO) is studied using the concurrent spin injection of a spin-polarized tunneling current and a spin Hall current exciting the free layer into dynamic regimes beyond what is achieved by each individual mechanism. The pure spin injection is capable of inducing oscillations in the absence of charge currents effectively reducing the critical tunneling current to zero. This reduction of the critical charge currents can improve the endurance of both STNOs and non-volatile magnetic memories (MRAM) devices. It is shown that the system response can be described in terms of an injected spin current density $J_s$ which results from the contribution of both spin injection mechanisms, with the tunneling current polarization $p$ and the spin Hall angle $theta$ acting as key parameters determining the efficiency of each injection mechanism. The experimental data exhibits an excellent agreement with this model which can be used to quantitatively predict the critical points ($J_s = -2.26pm 0.09 times 10^9 hbar/e$ A/m$^2$) and the oscillation amplitude as a function of the input currents. In addition, the fitting of the data also allows an independent confirmation of the values estimated for the spin Hall angle and tunneling current polarization as well as the extraction of the damping $alpha = 0.01$ and non-linear damping $Q = 3.8pm 0.3$ parameters.
Perpendicularly magnetized materials have attracted tremendous interest due to their high anisotropy, which results in extremely narrow, nano-sized domain walls. As a result, the recently studied current-induced domain wall motion (CIDWM) in these materials promises to enable a novel class of data, memory, and logic devices. In this letter, we propose the spin Hall effect as a radically new mechanism for CIDWM. We are able to carefully tune the net spin Hall current in depinning experiments on Pt/Co/Pt nanowires, offering unique control over CIDWM. Furthermore, we determine that the depinning efficiency is intimately related to the internal structure of the domain wall, which we control by small fields along the nanowire. This new manifestation of CIDWM offers a very attractive new degree of freedom for manipulating domain wall motion by charge currents, and sheds light on the existence of contradicting reports on CIDWM in perpendicularly magnetized materials.