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Quenching of an antiferromagnet into high resistivity states using electrical or ultrashort optical pulses

Nature Electronics volume 4, pages 30–37 (2021)Cite this article

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Abstract

Antiferromagnets are of potential use in the development of spintronic devices due to their ultrafast dynamics, insensitivity to external magnetic fields and absence of magnetic stray fields. Similar to their ferromagnetic counterparts, antiferromagnets can store information in the orientations of the collective magnetic order vector. However, the readout magnetoresistivity signals in simple antiferromagnetic films are weak, and reorientation of the magnetic order vector via optical excitation has not yet been achieved. Here we report the reversible and reproducible quenching of antiferromagnetic CuMnAs into nano-fragmented domain states using either electrical or ultrashort optical pulses. The changes in the resistivity of the system approach 20% at room temperature, which is comparable to the giant magnetoresistance ratios in ferromagnetic multilayers. We also obtain a signal readout by optical reflectivity.

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Fig. 1: Unipolar high-resistive switching in an elementary bar resistor microdevice.
Fig. 2: Resistivity switching ratios.
Fig. 3: Reproducible analogue switching characteristics.
Fig. 4: Relaxation of the switching signal, optical readout and switching by nanosecond pulses.
Fig. 5: Femtosecond-laser pulse switching.
Fig. 6: Optical switching characteristics.

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Data availability

The data that support the plots within this paper and other findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge J. Kastil and M. Míšek for experimental support. This work was supported in part by the Ministry of Education of the Czech Republic infrastructure grants CzechNanoLab no. LM2018110, no. LNSM-LNSpin and MGLM no. LM2018096, the Czech Science Foundation grant no. 19-28375X, the Charles University grant GA UK nos. 886317 and 1582417, the EU FET Open RIA grant no. 766566 and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council grant no. EP/P019749/1. P.W. acknowledges support from the Royal Society through a University Research Fellowship. T.J. acknowledges support from the Neuron Foundation Prize and K.O. from the Neuron Foundation Impuls grant.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Physics, Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, Czech Republic

    Z. Kašpar, J. Zubáč, F. Krizek, V. Novák, X. Marti, J. Wunderlich, K. Olejník & T. Jungwirth

  2. Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Charles University in Prague, Prague, Czech Republic

    Z. Kašpar, M. Surýnek, J. Zubáč & P. Němec

  3. School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK

    R. P. Campion, K. W. Edmonds, S. Reimers, O. J. Amin, P. Wadley & T. Jungwirth

  4. Department of Materials, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

    M. S. Wörnle & P. Gambardella

  5. Department of Physics, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

    M. S. Wörnle

  6. Diamond Light Source, Chilton, Didcot, UK

    S. Reimers, F. Maccherozzi & S. S. Dhesi

  7. Institute of Experimental and Applied Physics, University of Regensburg, Regensburg, Germany

    J. Wunderlich

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  1. Z. Kašpar
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Contributions

K.O., Z.K. and T.J. conceived and designed the project. Z.K., M.S., J.Z., F.K., K.O., P.W., K.W.E., S.R., O.J.A., F.M. and S.S.D. performed experiments. K.O., P.N., P.W., K.W.E., J.W., X.M., M.S.W., P.G. and T.J. analysed data. V.N., F.K. and R.P.C. contributed materials. K.O. and T.J. wrote the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to T. Jungwirth.

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Peer review information Nature Electronics thanks the anonymous reviewers for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary Information

Supplementary Figs. 1–15 and Notes 1 and 2.

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Kašpar, Z., Surýnek, M., Zubáč, J. et al. Quenching of an antiferromagnet into high resistivity states using electrical or ultrashort optical pulses. Nat Electron 4, 30–37 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41928-020-00506-4

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