• Open Access

Scattering-induced and highly tunable by gate damping-like spin-orbit torque in graphene doubly proximitized by two-dimensional magnet Cr2Ge2Te6 and monolayer WS2

Klaus Zollner, Marko D. Petrović, Kapildeb Dolui, Petr Plecháč, Branislav K. Nikolić, and Jaroslav Fabian
Phys. Rev. Research 2, 043057 – Published 9 October 2020

Abstract

Graphene sandwiched between semiconducting monolayers of ferromagnet Cr2Ge2Te6 and transition-metal dichalcogenide WS2 acquires both spin-orbit (SO) coupling, of valley-Zeeman and Rashba types, and exchange coupling. Using first principles combined with quantum transport calculations, we predict that such doubly proximitized graphene within van der Waals heterostructure will exhibit SO torque driven by unpolarized charge current. This system lacks spin Hall current which is putatively considered as necessary for the efficient damping-like (DL) SO torque that plays a key role in magnetization switching. Instead, it demonstrates how a DL SO torque component can be generated solely by skew scattering off spin-independent potential barrier or impurities in purely two-dimensional electronic transport due to the presence of proximity SO coupling and its spin texture tilted out of plane. This leads to current-driven nonequilibrium spin density emerging in all spatial directions, whose cross product with proximity magnetization yields DL SO torque, unlike the ballistic regime with no scatterers in which only field-like (FL) SO torque appears. In contrast to SO torque on conventional metallic ferromagnets in contact with three-dimensional SO-coupled materials, the ratio of FL and DL components of SO torque can be tuned by more than an order of magnitude via combined top and back gates.

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  • Received 14 May 2020
  • Accepted 15 September 2020

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.2.043057

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.

Published by the American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Condensed Matter, Materials & Applied Physics

Authors & Affiliations

Klaus Zollner1,*, Marko D. Petrović2,3, Kapildeb Dolui3, Petr Plecháč2, Branislav K. Nikolić3,†, and Jaroslav Fabian1

  • 1Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of Regensburg, 93040 Regensburg, Germany
  • 2Department of Mathematical Sciences, University of Delaware, Newark, Delaware 19716, USA
  • 3Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Delaware, Newark, Delaware 19716, USA

  • *klaus.zollner@physik.uni-regensburg.de
  • bnikolic@udel.edu

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Vol. 2, Iss. 4 — October - December 2020

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