Large spin Hall magnetoresistance and its correlation to the spin-orbit torque in W/CoFeB/MgO structures

Abstract

The phenomena based on spin-orbit interaction in heavy metal/ferromagnet/oxide structures have been investigated extensively due to their applicability to the manipulation of the magnetization direction via the in-plane current. This implies the existence of an inverse effect, in which the conductivity in such structures should depend on the magnetization orientation. In this work, we report a systematic study of the magnetoresistance (MR) of W/CoFeB/MgO structures and its correlation with the current-induced torque to the magnetization. We observe that the MR is independent of the angle between the magnetization and current direction but is determined by the relative magnetization orientation with respect to the spin direction accumulated by the spin Hall effect, for which the symmetry is identical to that of so-called the spin Hall magnetoresistance. The MR of similar to 1% in W/CoFeB/MgO samples is considerably larger than those in other structures of Ta/CoFeB/MgO or Pt/Co/AlOx, which indicates a larger spin Hall angle of W. Moreover, the similar W thickness dependence of the MR and the current-induced magnetization switching efficiency demonstrates that MR in a non-magnet/ferromagnet structure can be utilized to understand other closely correlated spin-orbit coupling effects such as the inverse spin Hall effect or the spin-orbit spin transfer torques.