Current-driven excitation of magnetic multilayers

A new mechanism is proposed for exciting the magnetic state of a ferromagnet. Assuming ballistic conditions and using WKB wave functions, we predict that a transfer of vectorial spin accompanies an electric current flowing perpendicular to two parallel magnetic films connected by a normal metallic spacer. This spin transfer drives motions of the two magnetization vectors within their instantaneously common plane. Consequent new mesoscopic precession and switching phenomena with potential applications are predicted. PACS: 75.50. Rr; 75.70. Cn A magnetic multilayer (MML) is composed of alternating ferromagnetic and paramagnetic sublayers whose thicknesses usually range between 1 and l0 nm. The discovery in 1988 of gian t magne tore s i s tance (GMR) in such multilayers stimulates much current research [1]. Although the initial reports dealt with currents flowing in the layer planes (CIP), the magnetoresistive phenomenon is known to be even stronger for currents flowing perpendicular to the plane (CPP) [2]. We predict here that the spinpolarized nature of such a perpendicular current generally creates a mutual transference of spin angular momentum between the magnetic sublayers which is manifested in their dynamic response. This response, which occurs only for CPP geometry, we propose to characterize as spin transfer . It can dominate the Larmor response to the magnetic field induced by * Fax: + 1-914-945-3291; email: slon@watson.ibm. com. the current when the magnetic sublayer thickness is about 1 nm and the smaller of its other two dimensions is less than 10= to 10 3 r im. On this mesoscopic scale, two new phenomena become possible: a steady precession driven by a constant current, and alternatively a novel form of switching driven by a pulsed current. Other forms of current-driven magnetic response without the use of any electromagnetically induced magnetic field are already known. Reports of both theory and experiments show how the exchange effect of external current flowing through a ferromagnetic domain wall causes it to move [3]. Even closer to the present subject is the magnetic response to tunneling current in the case of the sandwich structure f e r r o m a g n e t / i n s u l a t o r / f e r r o m a g n e t ( F / I / F ) predicted previously [4]. Unfortunately, theoretical relations indicated that the dissipation of energy, and therefore temperature rise, needed to produce more than barely observable spin-transfer through a tunneling barrier is prohibitively large. 0304-8853/96/$15.00 Copyright © 1996 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. PH S0304-8853(96)00062-5 12 ,/. C, Slo,cgewski / Journal of Magnetism and Magnetic Materials 159 (1996) L/ L7 However. the advent of multilayers incorporating very thin paramagnetic metallic spacers, rather than a barrier, places the realization of spin transfer in a different light. In the first place, the metallic spacer implies a low resistance and therefore low Ohmic dissipation for a given current, to which spin-transfer effects are proportional. Secondly, numerous experiments [5] and theories [6] show that the fundamental interlayer exchange coupling of RKKY type diminishes in strength and varies in sign as spacer thickness increases. Indeed, there exist experimental spacers which are thick enough (e.g. 4 nm) for the exchange coupling to be negligible even though spin relaxation is too weak to significantly diminish the GMR effect which relies on preservation of spin direction during electron transit across the spacer. Moreover, the same fact of long spin relaxation time in magnetic multilayers is illustrated on an even larger distance scale, an order of magnitude greater than the circa 10 nm electron mean free path, by spin injection experiments [7]. It follows, as we show below, that interesting current-driven spin-transfer effects are expected under laboratory conditions involving very small distance scales. We begin with simple arguments to explain current-driven spin transfer and establish its physical scale. We then sketch a detailed treatment and summarize its results. Finally, we predict two spin-transfer phenomena: steady magnetic precession driven by a constant current and a novel form of magnetic switching. We consider the five metallic regions represented schematically in Fig. 1. Layers A, B, and C are paramagnetic, whilst F I and F2 are ferromagnetic. The instantaneous macroscopic vectors hS~ and kS 2 forming the included angle 0 represent the respective total spin momenta per unit area of the ferromagnets. Now consider a flow of electrons moving rightward through the sandwich. The works on spin injection [7] show that if the thickness of spacer B is less than the spin-diffusion length, usually at least 100 nm, then some degree of spin polarization along the instantaneous axis parallel to the vector S~ of local ferromagnetic polarization in FI will be present in the electrons impinging on F2. This leads us to consider a three-layer (B, F2, C in Fig. 1) model in which an electron with initial spin state along the direction Sj is incident from S i ~ i S2 ~, EF=0J.