Large Current Driven Domain Wall Mobility and Gate Tuning of Coercivity in Ferrimagnetic Mn₄N Thin Films

Abstract

Spintronics, which is the basis of a low-power, beyond-CMOS technology for computational and memory devices, remains up to now entirely based on critical materials such as Co, heavy metals and rare-earths. Here, we show that Mn₄N, a rare-earth free ferrimagnet made of abundant elements, is an exciting candidate for the development of sustainable spintronics devices. Mn₄N thin films grown epitaxially on SrTiO₃ substrates possess remarkable properties, such as a perpendicular magnetization, a very high extraordinary Hall angle (2%) and smooth domain walls at the millimeter scale. Moreover, domain walls can be moved at record speeds by spin-polarized currents, in absence of spin-orbit torques. This can be explained by the large efficiency of the adiabatic spin transfer torque, due to the conjunction of a reduced magnetization and a large spin polarization. Finally, we show that the application of gate voltages through the SrTiO₃ substrates allows modulating the Mn₄N coercive field with a large efficiency.