We investigate the spin Hall magnetoresistance (SMR) at room temperature in thin film heterostructures of antiferromagnetic, insulating, (0001)-oriented alpha-Fe2O3 (hematite) and Pt. We measure their longitudinal and transverse resistivities while rotating an applied magnetic field of up to 17T in three orthogonal planes. For out-of-plane magnetotransport measurements, we find indications for a multidomain antiferromagnetic configuration whenever the field is aligned along the film normal. For in-plane field rotations, we clearly observe a sinusoidal resistivity oscillation characteristic for the SMR due to a coherent rotation of the Neel vector. The maximum SMR amplitude of 0.25% is, surprisingly, twice as high as for prototypical ferrimagnetic Y3Fe5O12/Pt heterostructures. The SMR effect saturates at much smaller magnetic fields than in comparable antiferromagnets, making the alpha-Fe2O3/Pt system particularly interesting for room-temperature antiferromagnetic spintronic applications.
@article{arxiv.1907.13393,
title = {Large spin Hall magnetoresistance in antiferromagnetic \alpha-Fe2O3/Pt heterostructures},
author = {Johanna Fischer and Matthias Althammer and Nynke Vlietstra and Hans Huebl and Sebastian T. B. Goennenwein and Rudolf Gross and Stephan Geprägs and Matthias Opel},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1907.13393},
year = {2020}
}
Comments
10 pages, 9 figures, 61 (updated) references, including supplemental material