Strain-Enhanced Charge-to-Spin Conversion in Ta/Fe/Pt Multilayers Grown on Flexible Mica Substrate

Er Liu , T. Fache (1) , D Cespedes-Berrocal , Zhi Zhang (2) , S. Petit-Watelot (1) , Stéphane Mangin (1) , Feng Xu (3) , J.-C Rojas-Sánchez (4)

1 IJL - Institut Jean Lamour
2 CIS@K-STATE - Department of Computing and Information Sciences [Kansas]
3 UPC - Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya = Université polytechnique de Catalogne [Barcelona]
4 Laboratoire Albert Fert (ex-UMPhy Unité mixte de physique CNRS/Thales)

Recent demonstration of magnetization manipulation has been focused on the utilization of pure spin current converted by charge current in nonmagnetic materials with strong spin-orbit coupling (SOC), which stimulates intensive studies on the exploration of materials with larger SOC, such as heavy metals and topological insulators. We suggest an alternative approach for enhancing the effective charge-to-spin conversion efficiency by applying strain in Ta/Fe/Pt films grown on flexible mica substrates. We experimentally demonstrate a large and tunable charge-to-spin conversion efficiency in Ta/Fe/Pt films by applying compressive strain within a flexible substrate, and over 50% enhancement of effective spin Hall angle eff SHE of up to approximately 0.2 is achieved in a 6.26‰ strained film. Our findings may spur further work on the integration of flexible electronics and SOC and may potentially lead to the innovation of alternative flexible spintronics devices.

Domaines: Science des matériaux [cond-mat.mtrl-sci]

Er Liu, T. Fache, D Cespedes-Berrocal, Zhi Zhang, S. Petit-Watelot, et al.. Strain-Enhanced Charge-to-Spin Conversion in Ta/Fe/Pt Multilayers Grown on Flexible Mica Substrate. Physical Review Applied, 2019, 12, ⟨10.1103/PhysRevApplied.12.044074⟩. ⟨hal-02405856⟩