JOURNAL OF APPLIED PHYSICS 105, 07D116 2009

Microwave generation of tilted-polarizer spin torque oscillator

Yan Zhou,1,a C. L. Zha,1 S. Bonetti,1 J. Persson,1 and Johan kerman1,2,b
1

Department of Microelectronics and Applied Physics, Royal Institute of Technology, Electrum 229, 164 40 Kista, Sweden 2 Department of Physics, Gteborg University, 412 96 Gteborg, Sweden

Presented 14 November 2008; received 16 September 2008; accepted 5 November 2008; published online 20 February 2009 Microwave frequency generation in a spin torque oscillator STO with a tilted xed layer magnetization is studied using numerical simulation of the LandauLifshitzGilbertSlonczewski equation. The dependence of the STO free layer precession frequency on drive current is determined as a function of xed layer tilt angle. We nd that zero-eld STO operation is possible for almost all tilt angles, which allow for great freedom in choosing the detailed layer structure of the STO. 2009 American Institute of Physics. DOI: 10.1063/1.3068429
I. INTRODUCTION

a b

Electronic mail: zhouyan@kth.se. Electronic mail: akerman1@kth.se.

FIG. 1. Color online Schematic of a TP-STO. M is the tilted xed layer magnetization. NM is nonmagnetic layer and m stands for the magnetization of the free layer. x is the easy axis and x-y is the easy plane of the free layer with respect to the magnetization. M lies in the x-z plane with angle x-axis. 2009 American Institute of Physics

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Spin momentum transfer from a spin-polarized current to localized magnetic moment was rst introduced theoretically by Slonczewski1 and Berger2 in 1996, and demonstrated experimentally in 1999.3 One of the most appealing application of spin transfer devices is the possibility of realizing compact, current tunable microwave oscillators, socalled spin torque oscillators STOs .4 In addition to its compact form factor with typical lateral dimensions in the 100 nm range, the STO also offers high spectral purity, an extremely wide frequency tuning range and the possibility of integration with most Si and III-V semiconductor technologies. As a consequence the STO has great potential to replace traditional ultrabroadband oscillator technologies, such as the yttrium iron garnet YIG oscillator. STOs typically operate under the application of large external magnetic elds, and as in the case of YIG oscillators, this both complicates the nal device and may lead to increased power consumption. Recently, it has been shown that if a xed layer with a magnetization perpendicular to the free layer is employed in a spin-valve structure, it is possible to observe microwave generation in zero applied magnetic eld.5 One drawback of this design is the rotational symmetry of the magnetizations in this device, which by denition cancels any output signal. To generate an output one employs a readout layer spin-valve based to sense the oscillation. Adding additional layers with associated pinning layers further complicates the stacks and renders it less appealing for production. Besides the perpendicular STO, two other types of novel STOs, the wavy torque STO and the vortex STO, have been experimentally demonstrated to yield microwave generation under essentially zero magnetic eld.6,7 While the former lacks in output signal strength, the latter is limited to maximum frequencies around 1 GHz and hence less attractive for microwave generation. More recently we have shown, using numerical simulations, that a novel STO design, where the magnetization of

the xed layer is tilted with respect to the free layer, is capable of generating microwave signal in zero applied magnetic eld and without the need of an extra readout layer.8 As a realistic choice of xed layer material, we suggested L10 111 FePt and L10 101 FePt with tilt angles of = 36 and 45, respectively. In this work we extend the angular range to all angles between 0 and 90 and nd somewhat unexpectedly that zero eld operation should be possible at almost all xed layer angles. We study the detailed magnetization dynamics as a function of drive current and xed layer angle, and also the associated microwave frequency and effective magnetoresistance MR of our device.
II. MODEL AND DESCRIPTION

The schematic of the tilted-polarizer STO TP-STO is shown in Fig. 1. The xed layer magnetization is tilted out of the lm plane and forms an angle with the free layer easy x-z plane. While M in principle may take on any angle with respect to the x-axis, we here limit the analysis to M lying in the x-z plane. As a consequence of the tilt angle , the spin polarized current is now composed of two spin polarization components: the in-plane component px and the perpendicular-to-the-plane component pz . As shown in our previous study,8 the perpendicular component pz of the spin polarized current is able to generate precession in the free

m
Free layer Spacer Fixed layer

M y x

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layer m, while the in-plane component of the xed layer provides a means to detect the oscillations through giant MR GMR or tunneling MR. In our simulations we assume an asymmetric Slonczewski type torque incorporated into the standard Landau LifshitzGilbert equation: dm = m dt M , Heff + m dm + dt 2 J m 0 M S,freeed m 1

70 (de egree) 50 30 10

0.30 0.15

J<0 J>0

f (GHz) 30 20 10

(a)

0.00 0 00 0

15 30 45 60 75 90 (degree)

90
0

(b)
100%

where m is the unit vector of the free layer magnetization, M S,free is its saturation magnetization, is the gyromagnetic ratio, is the Gilbert damping parameter, and 0 is the magnetic vacuum permeability. The last term represents the asymmetric spin torque, where is the reduced Planck constant, d is the free layer thickness, e is the electron charge, and is the angle between m and M . The applied eld is held at zero throughout this work. Thus the effective eld is composed of an easy-axis anisotropy eld Hk along the x axis and an out-of-plane demagnetization eld Hd along the z axis: Heff = Hkexmx Hdezmz / m . The current density J is dened as positive when it ows from the xed layer to the free layer. We use the general asymmetric angular dependence of the spin torque amplitude,915 = 2 1+ 2 + 1 + cos , 2

70 (degre ee) 50 30 10 -1 0

-0.5 -1 1 0 y -1

A B C
x 0 1

50%

0%

C B A
1 2 3 4 5 J (108 A/cm2 J (108 A/cm2) ) 6 7 8

FIG. 2. Color online a Frequency and b effective MR vs drive current density at tilt angles from 0 to 90, respectively. Inset in a : critical current density vs tilt angle for both current polarities. Inset in b : precession orbits = 10 , B = 20 , and C = 30 at J = 1 for different points A 108 A / cm2.

where is the spin polarization efciency constant and is the GMR asymmetry parameter describing the deviation from sinusoidal angular dependence. The following generalized expression is used to describe the angular dependence of MR,915 r= R 1 cos2 /2 RP , = RAP RP 1 + cos2 /2 3

where r is the reduced MR, and RP and RAP denote the resistance in the parallel and antiparallel congurations, respectively. As material parameters we use Cu as spacer, Permalloy Py as the free layer, and FePt as the xed layer. The lateral dimension of the Py thin lm free layer is assumed to be an elliptical shape of 130 70 nm2, with a thickness of 3 nm. The thickness of the xed layer FePt is 20 nm. The values of some parameters used in the calculation are listed as = 0.01, = 1.76 1011 Hz/ T, Ms follows:8,12,16 = 860 kA/ m, Hk = 0.01 T, Hd = 1 T, = 0.35, and = 4.
III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The dynamic phase diagram of frequency f as a function of the driving current density J and tilt angle is shown in Fig. 2 a . The critical current for the onset of the STO precession is plotted in the inset of Fig. 2 a for both current polarities. While the critical current is very high at small tilt and apangles, it gradually decreases with increasing proaches values that have been attained in perpendicularly polarized STOs. It can also be seen that the working current

window has a nonmonotonic dependence on the tilt angle and is very asymmetric with respect to the current polarity. For positive J the current window has a maximum around 22. Above this angle, the full frequency range is accessible by varying the current. However, below = 22, the frequency range is essentially cutoff at the lower end. For negative J the dependence is much less dramatic and the entire frequency range is accessible at all tilt angles. In Fig. 2 b , we plot the effective MR as a function of the driving current density J and tilt angle . The effective MR is calculated by the difference between the maximum and minimum values of resistance for each oscillation and normalized by the maximum resistance variation between parallel and antiparallel congurations of the spin-valve structure. Thus it is correlated with the output power from the device. The effective MR is generally larger at lower angles than at higher angles for both current polarities, as shown in Fig. 2 b . In the inset, we show the development of the precession orbits with increasing at xed current density J = 1 108 A / cm2. With increasing tilt angle and hence a larger perpendicular component of the spin polarization current, the orbit will be pushed further away from the lm plane x-y plane . The farther away from the lm plane i.e., the smaller the cone angle the smaller the effective MR. Figure 2 b also suggests that positive drive current is favorable for large output TP-STO operation; only in a very limited beta range does negative current polarity produce any sizeable effective MR. To optimize the effective MR it appears that a choice of = 10 40 should be reasonable. The oscillation frequency dependence on driving current at selected angles is plotted in Fig. 3. It is noteworthy that the maximum operating frequency 29 GHz is independent of tilt angle at negative drive current and only starts depend-

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Support from The Swedish Foundation for strategic Research SSF , The Swedish Research Council VR , and the Gran Gustafsson Foundation is gratefully acknowledged. Johan kerman is a Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences Research Fellow supported by a grant from the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation.
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2 1

FIG. 3. Color online TP-STO operating frequency vs current density at different tilt angles.

ing on for values below 35 at positive current polarity. For yet smaller angles in the positive current range, the maximum operating frequency drops dramatically and also exhibits a nonmonotonic current dependence the complete plots for 15 and 25 are not shown . The strong curvature and nal decrease in operating frequency is due to the asymmetric spin torque employed in the calculation.12,15 Experimentally, a tilted easy-axis xed layer can be realized by growing L0 111 FePt thin lms with high magnetocrystalline anisotropy Ku 7 107 erg/ cm3 , and a magnetization with an orientation = 36 and 45, with respect to the lm plane.8,17 To achieve a continuously variable tilt angle, amorphous alloys such as TbFeCo Ref. 18 may be employed or CoCr lms, which show a thickness dependent tilt angle.1921 In summary, we investigated a new type of tilted polarizer STO, which combines both high frequency tuning range, zero eld operation, and relatively high effective MR. We hope our study can stimulate further experimental effort and can serve as a guideline in search of the parameter space, which combines wide operating frequency and optimized power output for TP-STO-based devices.

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