Impact of the interplay of piezoelectric strain and current-induced heating on the field-like spin–orbit torque in perpendicularly magnetized Ta/Co20Fe60B20/Ta/MgO film

Abstract

Spin–orbit torques (SOTs) are known to be the most efficient way to manipulate the magnetization direction by electrical currents. While, conventionally, one symmetry component of the SOTs, namely, the damping-like torque, was considered to play a primary role, recently, the significance of the other component, the field-like torque, has been revised, owing to the non-trivial dynamics it can induce in heavy metal/ferromagnet multilayers. In this work, we first discuss the unusual behavior of the field-like SOT in a Ta/CoFeB/Ta/MgO multilayer system with a reduced magnetic anisotropy and demonstrate an energy-efficient approach to manipulate the magnitude of the SOT effective fields. Finally, our results show a possibility to engineer the anisotropy of the field-like SOTs by piezoelectric strain, which can be potentially attractive for application in spintronics.