Giant facet-dependent spin-orbit torque and spin Hall conductivity in the triangular antiferromagnet IrMn3

Abstract

There has been considerable interest in spin-orbit torques for the purpose of manipulating the magnetization of ferromagnetic elements for spintronic technologies. Spin-orbit torques are derived from spin currents created from charge currents in materials with significant spin-orbit coupling that propagate into an adjacent ferromagnetic material. A key challenge is to identify materials that exhibit large spin Hall angles, that is, efficient charge-to-spin current conversion. Using spin torque ferromagnetic resonance, we report the observation of a giant spin Hall angle θeffSH of up to ~0.35 in (001)-oriented single-crystalline antiferromagnetic IrMn3 thin films, coupled to ferromagnetic permalloy layers, and a θeffSH that is about three times smaller in (111)-oriented films. For (001)-oriented samples, we show that the magnitude of θeffSH can be significantly changed by manipulating the populations of various antiferromagnetic domains through perpendicular field annealing. We identify two distinct mechanisms that contribute to θeffSH: the first mechanism, which is facet-independent, arises from conventional bulk spin-dependent scattering within the IrMn3 layer, and the second intrinsic mechanism is derived from the unconventional antiferromagnetic structure of IrMn3. Using ab initio calculations, we show that the triangular magnetic structure of IrMn3 gives rise to a substantial intrinsic spin Hall conductivity that is much larger for the (001) than for the (111) orientation, consistent with our experimental findings.