Enhanced spin–orbit torque efficiency in Pt100−xNix alloy based magnetic bilayer

The binary alloy/ferromagnetic metal heterostructure has drawn extensive attention in the research field of spin–orbittorque(SOT)due to the potential enhancement of SOT efficiency via composition engineering.In this work,the magneticproperties and SOT efficiency in the Pt100?xNix/Ni78Fe22 bilayers were investigated via the spin-torque ferromagneticresonance(ST-FMR)technique.The effective magnetic anisotropy field and effective damping constant extracted by analyzing the ST-FMR spectra show a weak dependence on the Ni concentration.The effective spin-mixing conductanceof 8.40×10¹⁴??1·m?2and the interfacial spin transparency Tin of 0.59 were obtained for the sample of Pt70Ni30/NiFebilayer.More interestingly,the SOT efficiency that is carefully extracted from the angular dependence of ST-FMR spectrashows a nonmonotonic dependence on the Ni concentration,which reaches the maximum at x=18.The enhancement ofthe SOT efficiency by alloying the Ni with Pt shows potential in lowering the critical switching current.Moreover,alloyingrelatively cheaper Ni with Pt may promote to reduce the cost of SOT devices.