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Dependence of Interfacial Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya Interaction on Layer Thicknesses in Ta/Co−Fe−B/TaOx Heterostructures from Brillouin Light Scattering

Avinash Kumar Chaurasiya, Samiran Choudhury, Jaivardhan Sinha, and Anjan Barman*

  • Department of Condensed Matter Physics and Material Sciences, S. N. Bose National Centre for Basic Sciences, Block JD, Sec. III, Salt Lake, Kolkata 700106, India

  • *abarman@bose.res.in
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Phys. Rev. Applied 9, 014008 – Published 10 January, 2018

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevApplied.9.014008

Abstract

The interfacial Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction (IDMI) has recently drawn extensive research interest due to its fundamental role in stabilizing chiral spin textures in ultrathin ferromagnets, which are suitable candidates for future magnetic-memory devices. Here, we explore the ferromagnetic and heavy-metal layer-thickness dependence of IDMI in technologically important Ta/Co20Fe60B20/TaOx heterostructures by measuring nonreciprocity in spin-wave frequency using the Brillouin light-scattering technique. The observed value of the IDMI constant agrees with that obtained from a separate measurement of in-plane angular dependence of frequency nonreciprocity, which is also in good agreement with the theory predicted by Cortes-Ortuno and Landeros. Linear scaling behavior of IDMI with the inverse of Co-Fe-B thicknesses suggests that IDMI originates primarily from the interface in these heterostructures, whereas we observe a weak dependence of Ta thickness on the strength of IDMI. Importantly, the observed value of the IDMI constant is reasonably large by a factor of 3 compared to annealed Ta/Co−Fe−B/MgO heterostructures. We propose that the observation of large IDMI is likely due to the absence of boron diffusion towards the Ta/Co−Fe−B interface as the heterostructures are as deposited. Our detailed investigation opens up a route to designing thin-film heterostructures with the tailored IDMI constant for controlling Skyrmion-based magnetic-memory devices.

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Phys. Rev. Applied 9, 014008– Published 10 January, 2018
  • Received 27 July 2017
  • Revised 30 October 2017
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