Giant anisotropic magnetoresistance and nonvolatile memory in canted antiferromagnet Sr<sub>2</sub>IrO<sub>4</sub>.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 31123257.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-019-10299-6 and PMC identifier 6533248.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Antiferromagnets have been generating intense interest in the spintronics community, owing to their intrinsic appealing properties like zero stray field and ultrafast spin dynamics. While the control of antiferromagnetic (AFM) orders has been realized by various means, applicably appreciated functionalities on the readout side of AFM-based devices are urgently desired. Here, we report the remarkably enhanced anisotropic magnetoresistance (AMR) as giant as ~160% in a simple resistor structure made of AFM Sr<sub>2</sub>IrO<sub>4</sub> without auxiliary reference layer. The underlying mechanism for the giant AMR is an indispensable combination of atomic scale giant-MR-like effect and magnetocrystalline anisotropy energy, which was not accessed earlier. Furthermore, we demonstrate the bistable nonvolatile memory states that can be switched in-situ without the inconvenient heat-assisted procedure, and robustly preserved even at zero magnetic field, due to the modified interlayer coupling by 1% Ga-doping in Sr<sub>2</sub>IrO<sub>4</sub>. These findings represent a straightforward step toward the AFM spintronic devices.