Disentangling electrical switching of antiferromagnetic NiO using high magnetic fields

Abstract

Recent demonstrations of the electrical switching of antiferromagnets (AFs) have given an enormous impulse to the field of AF spintronics. Many of these observations are plagued by nonmagnetic effects that are very diffi-cult to distinguish from the actual magnetic ones. Here, we study the electrical switching of thin (5 nm) NiO films in Pt/NiO devices using magnetic fields up to 15 T to quantitatively disentangle these magnetic and nonmagnetic effects. We demonstrate that these fields suppress the magnetic components of the electrical switching of NiO, but leave the nonmagnetic components intact. Using a monodomainization model the contributions are separated, showing how they behave as a function of the current density. These results show that combining electrical methods and strong magnetic fields can be an invaluable tool for AF spintronics, allowing for implementing and studying electrical switching of AFs in more complex systems.