Letter abstract
Nature Materials 6, 270 - 273 (2007)
Published online: 18 March 2007 | doi:10.1038/nmat1867
Subject Categories: Electronic materials | Magnetic materials | Nanoscale materials
Electrical switching of the vortex core in a magnetic disk
Keisuke Yamada1,5, Shinya Kasai1,5, Yoshinobu Nakatani2, Kensuke Kobayashi1, Hiroshi Kohno3, André Thiaville4 & Teruo Ono1
Amagnetic vortex is a curling magnetic structure realized in a ferromagnetic disk, which is a promising candidate for a memory cell for future non-volatile data-storage devices1. Thus, an understanding of the stability and dynamical behaviour of the magnetic vortex is a major requirement for developing magnetic data-storage technology. Since the publication of experimental proof for the existence of a nanometre-scale core with out-of-plane magnetization in a magnetic vortex2, the dynamics of vortices have been investigated intensively3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. However, a way to electrically control the core magnetization, which is a key for constructing a vortex-core memory, has been lacking. Here, we demonstrate the electrical switching of the core magnetization by using the current-driven resonant dynamics of the vortex; the core switching is triggered by a strong dynamic field that is produced locally by a rotational core motion at a high speed of several hundred metres per second. Efficient switching of the vortex core without magnetic-field application is achieved owing to resonance. This opens up the potentiality of a simple magnetic disk as a building block for spintronic devices such as a memory cell where the bit data is stored as the direction of the nanometre-scale core magnetization.
- Institute for Chemical Research, Kyoto University, Uji 611-0011, Japan
- University of Electro-communications, Chofu 182-8585, Japan
- Graduate School of Engineering Science, Osaka University, Toyonaka 560-8531, Japan
- Laboratoire de physique des solides, CNRS, Univ. Paris-Sud, 91405 Orsay, France
- These authors contributed equally to this work
Correspondence to: Teruo Ono1 e-mail: ono@scl.kyoto-u.ac.jp
MORE ARTICLES LIKE THIS
These links to content published by NPG are automatically generated.
NEWS AND VIEWS
Spintronics Field-free ringing of nanomagnetsNature Physics News and Views (01 Jul 2007)
Spintronics Change of directionNature Materials News and Views (01 Apr 2007)
See all 8 matches for News And ViewsRESEARCH
Magnetic vortex core reversal by excitation with short bursts of an alternating fieldNature Letters to Editor (23 Nov 2006)
Probing vortex-core dynamics using current-induced resonant excitation of a trapped domain wallNature Physics Letter (01 May 2008)
See all 49 matches for Research
