Fabrication and Characterization of Nanocontact Spin-Torque Oscillators

• The manufacturing of nanocontact-based spin-torque oscillators (NC-STOs)has opened the door for spintronic devices to play a part as active microwaveelements. The NC-STO has the capability of converting a direct current intoa microwave signal, and vice versa, by utilizing the spin transfer torque (STT)in ferromagnetic multilayer systems. However, the high-frequency operation ofNC-STOs typically requires high magnetic fields and the microwave power theygenerate is rather limited. As a result, NC-STOs are not yet commercially used,and they require improvements in both material systems and device geometriesbefore they can find actual use in microwave applications.In order to improve and advance this technology, NC-STOs are requiredwith both different nanocontact (NC) sizes and geometries, and using differ- ent stacks of magnetic materials. This dissertation presents experimental in- vestigations into the manufacturing of such devices using different fabrication techniques and a number of different magnetic material stacks. Currently, the fabrication of NC-STOs is limited to advanced laboratories, because NC fabri- cation requires high-resolution lithography tools. In the present work, we have developed an alternative method of fabrication, which does not require such tools and has the capability of fabricating NC-STOs having one to hundreds of NCs in a variety of sizes, possibly  down to 20 nm. Devices fabricated with this method have shown mutual synchronization of three parallel-connected NCs, and pairwise synchronization in devices with four and five NCs.Furthermore, the present work demonstrates low-field operation (down to0.02 Tesla) of NC-STOs at a record high frequency of 12 GHz. This wasachieved by implementing multilayers with a perpendicular magnetic anisotropy(PMA) material in the free layer of the NC-STO. In addition, the fabricateddevices revealed an unexpected dynamic regime under large external appliedfield (above 0.4 Tesla). The new dynamic regime was found to be due to anentirely novel nanomagnetic dynamic object â a so-called magnetic droplet soliton,predicted theoretically in 1977 but not experimentally observed until now.Detailed experiments and micromagnetic simulations show that the droplet hasvery rich dynamics.Finally,  spin-torque-induced  transverse spin wave instabilities have beenstudied.  A NC-STO with  a material stack consisting of a single ferromag- netic metal sandwiched between two non-ferromagnetic metals was fabricated. Prior to this work, evidence of spin wave instabilities was reported as resis- tance switching in nanopillar- and mechanical point contact based STOs. In the present  work, the fabricated NC-STOs showed actual microwave  signals up to 3 GHz under zero applied field with strong current hysteresis. All  the fabricated NC-STOs open up new means of studying STT in different environ- ments, in order to resolve their current drawbacks for industrial applications.

Subject headings

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Fysik (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Physical Sciences (hsv//eng)

TEKNIK OCH TEKNOLOGIER  -- Nanoteknik (hsv//swe)

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY  -- Nano-technology (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Spin-torque oscillators

phase locking

spin wave

giant magnetoresistance

spin transfer torque

thin films.

Publication and Content Type

vet (subject category)

dok (subject category)