External-Field-Free Spin Hall Switching of Perpendicular Magnetic Nanopillar with a Dipole-Coupled Composite Structure

Abstract: Spin Hall effect (SHE) induced reversal of perpendicular magnetization has attracted significant interest, due to its potential to lead to low power memory and logic devices. However, the switching requires an assisted in-plane magnetic field, which hampers its practical applications. Here, we introduce a novel approach for external-field-free spin Hall switching of a perpendicular nanomagnet by utilizing a local dipolar field arising from an adjacent in-plane magnetic layer. Robust switching of perpendicular CoFeB nanopillars in a dipole-coupled composite stack is experimentally demonstrated in the absence of any external magnetic field, in consistent with the results of micromagnetic simulation. Large in-plane compensation field of about 135 Oe and out-of-plane loop shift of about 45 Oe / 10 7 A cm-2 are obtained in the nanopillar devices with composite structure. By performing micromagnetic simulations, we confirm the composite external-field-free switching strategy can also work for a 10 x 10 nm2 circular pillar. Compared with other proposed methods for external-field-free spin Hall switching of perpendicular magnetization, the dipole-coupled composite structure is compatible with a wide range of spin Hall systems and perpendicular magnetic tunnel junctions, paving the way towards practical SHE-based MRAM and logic applications.