Highly Energy-Efficient Spin Current Generation in SrIrO3 by Manipulating the Octahedral Rotation

Qihan Zhang; Shu Shi; Zhenyi Zheng; Hengan Zhou; Ding-Fu Shao; Tieyang Zhao; Hanxin Su; Liang Liu; Xinyu Shu; Lanxin Jia; Youdi Gu; Rui Xiao; Guilei Wang; Chao Zhao; Huihui Li; Jingsheng Chen

doi:10.1021/acsami.3c15514

Highly Energy-Efficient Spin Current Generation in SrIrO₃ by Manipulating the Octahedral Rotation

ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2024 Jan 10;16(1):1129-1136. doi: 10.1021/acsami.3c15514. Epub 2023 Dec 20.

Authors

Qihan Zhang¹, Shu Shi¹, Zhenyi Zheng¹, Hengan Zhou¹, Ding-Fu Shao², Tieyang Zhao¹, Hanxin Su¹, Liang Liu³, Xinyu Shu⁴, Lanxin Jia¹, Youdi Gu¹, Rui Xiao¹, Guilei Wang⁵, Chao Zhao⁵, Huihui Li⁵, Jingsheng Chen^{1

6}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117575, Singapore.
² Key Laboratory of Materials Physics, Institute of Solid State Physics, HFIPS, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei 230031, China.
³ Key Laboratory of Artificial Structures and Quantum Control (Ministry of Education), School of Physics and Astronomy, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China.
⁴ State Key Laboratory of Low-Dimensional Quantum Physics and Department of Physics, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China.
⁵ Beijing Superstring Academy of Memory Technology, Beijing 100176, China.
⁶ Chongqing Research Institute, National University of Singapore, Chongqing 401120, China.

PMID: 38118124
DOI: 10.1021/acsami.3c15514

Abstract

Materials with strong spin-orbit coupling (SOC) have been continuously attracting intensive attention due to their promising application in energy-efficient, high-density, and nonvolatile spintronic devices. Particularly, transition-metal perovskite oxides with strong SOC have been demonstrated to exhibit efficient charge-spin interconversion. In this study, we systematically investigated the impact of epitaxial strain on the spin-orbit torque (SOT) efficiency in the SrIrO₃(SIO)/Ni₈₁Fe₁₉(Py) bilayer. The results reveal that the SOT efficiency is strongly related to the octahedral rotation around the in-plane axes of the single-crystal SIO. By modulating the epitaxial strain using different substrates, the SOT efficiency can be remarkably improved from 0.15 to 1.45. This 10-fold enhancement of SOT efficiency suggests that modulating the epitaxial strain is an efficient approach to control the SOT efficiency in complex oxide-based heterostructures. Our work may have the potential to advance the application of complex oxides in energy-efficient spintronic devices.

Keywords: octahedral rotation; reciprocal space mapping; spin Hall effect; spin-torque ferromagnetic resonance; spin−orbit torque; transition-metal perovskite oxides.