arXiv subjects

Min-Gu Kang

Publications and source records attributed to Min-Gu Kang.

7 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Challenges in orbital current-driven domain wall motion in light metal/ferrimagnet heterostructures

Recent advances in spintronics suggest that orbital Hall currents generated by charge injection in light metals can provide nonequilibrium angular momentum without relying on strong spin-orbit coupling (SOC). Here, we examine whether such orbital currents can drive domain wall (DW) motion in an amorphous ferrimagnetic alloy, Gd$_{25}$(Fe$_{9}$Co$_{1}$)$_{75}$ (GFC), where the rare-earth sublattice offers strong SOC for orbital-to-spin conversion. We compare three representative heterostructures: Pt/GFC as a spin Hall reference, light-metal (Mn or Ti)/GFC for direct orbital-current injection, and light-metal/Pt/GFC incorporating an ultrathin Pt layer for orbital-to-spin conversion. Whereas Pt/GFC exhibits robust and reproducible spin-orbit-torque-driven DW motion, no current-driven DW motion is detected in Mn/GFC or Ti/GFC. Second-harmonic Hall measurements nevertheless reveal finite damping-like torques in both Mn/GFC and Ti/GFC, demonstrating that angular-momentum transfer into GFC does occur but is far weaker than in Pt/GFC. Inserting a 1-nm-thick Pt conversion layer strongly enhances the damping-like torque and restores DW motion. Thickness-dependent analysis further shows that DW mobility and depinning thresholds correlate with the interfacial Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction and domain-wall width, highlighting weak torque conversion and insufficient interfacial stabilization of chiral DWs as key challenges for orbital-driven DW motion in light-metal/ferrimagnet heterostructures.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2025

Ultrathin bismuth-yttrium iron garnet films with tunable magnetic anisotropy

We report on the epitaxial growth of nm-thick films of bismuth-substituted yttrium iron garnet (BiYIG) by high-temperature off-axis radio-frequency magnetron sputtering. We demonstrate accurate control of the magnetic properties by tuning of the sputtering parameters and epitaxial strain on various (111)-oriented garnet substrates. BiYIG films with up to -0.80\% lattice mismatch with the substrate remain fully strained up to 60~nm-thick, maintaining a high crystalline quality. Transmission electron microscopy and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy confirm coherent epitaxial growth, the absence of defects, and limited interdiffusion at the BiYIG/substrate interface. Varying the tensile or compressive strain between -0.80\% and +0.56\% in BiYIG allows for accurate compensation of the total magnetic anisotropy through magneto-elastic coupling. The effective magnetic anisotropy of sputtered BiYIG films can be further tuned via the off-axis deposition angle and the oxygen flow during growth, which determine the cation stoichiometry. Under optimized growth conditions, a ferromagnetic resonance (FMR) linewidth of 1~mT at 10~GHz is reliably obtained even for thicknesses as low as 10~nm. We also report small FMR linewidths in ultrathin (2-5~nm) BiYIG films grown on diamagnetic substrate yttrium scandium gallium garnet. These findings highlight the promise of low-damping, strain-engineered nm-thick BiYIG films for implementing advanced functionalities in spin-orbitronic and magnonic devices. Specifically, the magnetic-anisotropy compensation and low damping enable large cone-angle magnetization dynamics immune to magnon-magnon nonlinear scattering.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2025

Orbital Pumping in Ferrimagnetic Insulators

We report the detection of pure orbital currents generated by both coherent and thermal magnons in the magnetic insulator Bi-doped yttrium iron garnet (BiYIG). The pumping of orbital and spin currents is jointly investigated in nano-devices made of naturally oxidized Cu, pure Cu, Pt, and Cr. The absence of charge conduction in BiYIG and the negligible spin-to-charge conversion of oxidized Cu allows us to disambiguate the orbital current contribution. Comparative measurements on YIG and BiYIG show that the origin of the orbital pumping in BiYIG/oxidized Cu is the dynamics of the orbital magnetization in the magnetic insulator. In Cr, the pumping signal is dominated by the negative spin Hall effect rather than the positive orbital Hall effect, indicating that orbital currents represent a minority of the total angular momentum current pumped from the magnetic insulator. Our results also evidence that improving the interfacial transparency significantly enhances pumping efficiencies not only for spin, but also for orbital currents.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2024

Competing Ordinary and Hanle Magnetoresistance in Pt and Ti Thin Films

One of the key elements in spintronics research is the spin Hall effect, allowing to generate spin currents from charge currents. A large spin Hall effect is observed in materials with strong spin orbit coupling, e.g., Pt. Recent research suggests the existence of an orbital Hall effect, the orbital analogue to the spin Hall effect, which also arises in weakly spin orbit coupled materials like Ti, Mn or Cr. In Pt both effects are predicted to coexist. In any of these materials, a magnetic field perpendicular to the spin or orbital accumulation leads to additional Hanle dephasing and thereby the Hanle magnetoresistance (MR). To reveal the MR behavior of a material with both spin and orbital Hall effect, we thus study the MR of Pt thin films over a wide range of thicknesses. Careful evaluation shows that the MR of our textured samples is dominated by the ordinary MR rather than by the Hanle effect. We analyze the intrinsic properties of Pt films deposited by different groups and show that next to the resistivity also the structural properties of the film influence which MR dominates. We further show that this correlation can be found in both spin Hall active materials like Pt and orbital Hall active materials, like Ti. For both materials, the crystalline samples shows a MR attributed to the ordinary MR, whereas we find a large Hanle MR for the samples without apparent structural order. We then provide a set of rules to distinguish between the ordinary and the Hanle MR. We conclude that in all materials with a spin or orbital Hall effect the Hanle MR and the ordinary MR coexist and the purity and crystallinity of the thin film determine the dominating effect.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2024

Orbital Torque in Rare-Earth Transition-Metal Ferrimagnets

Orbital currents have recently emerged as a promising tool to achieve electrical control of the magnetization in thin-film ferromagnets. Efficient orbital-to-spin conversion is required in order to torque the magnetization. Here we show that the injection of an orbital current in a ferrimagnetic GdyCo100-y alloy generates strong orbital torques whose sign and magnitude can be tuned by changing the Gd content and temperature. The effective spin-orbital Hall angle reaches up to -0.25 in a GdyCo100-y/CuOx bilayer compared to +0.03 in Co/CuOx and +0.13 in GdyCo100-y/Pt. This behavior is attributed to the local orbital-to-spin conversion taking place at the Gd sites, which is about five times stronger and of the opposite sign relative to Co. Furthermore, we observe a manyfold increase in the net orbital torque at low temperature, which we attribute to the improved conversion efficiency following the magnetic ordering of the Gd and Co sublattices.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2022

Long-Range Orbital Magnetoelectric Torque in Ferromagnets

While it is often assumed that the orbital response is suppressed and short-ranged due to strong crystal field potential and orbital quenching, we show that the orbital magnetoelectric response can be remarkably long-ranged in ferromagnets. In a bilayer consisting of a nonmagnet and a ferromagnet, spin injection from the interface results in spin accumulation and torque in the ferromagnet, which rapidly oscillate and decay by spin dephasing. In contrast, we find that even when an external electric field is applied only on the nonmagnet, we find substantially long-ranged orbital magnetoelectric response in the FM, which can go far beyond the spin dephasing length. This unusual feature is attributed to nearly degenerate orbital characters imposed by the crystal symmetry, which form hotspots for the intrinsic orbital response. Because only the states near the hotspots contribute dominantly, the induced orbital angular momentum does not exhibit destructive interference among states with different momentum as in the case of the spin dephasing. This gives rise to a distinct type of orbital torque on the magnetization, increasing with the thickness of the ferromagnet. Such behavior may serve as critical long-sought evidence of orbital transport to be directly tested in experiments. Our findings open the possibility of using long-range orbital magnetoelectric effect in orbitronic device applications.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2022

Efficient conversion of orbital Hall current to spin current for spin-orbit torque switching

Spin Hall effect, an electric generation of spin current, allows for efficient control of magnetization. Recent theory revealed that orbital Hall effect creates orbital current, which can be much larger than spin Hall-induced spin current. However, orbital current cannot directly exert a torque on a ferromagnet, requiring a conversion process from orbital current to spin current. Here, we report two effective methods of the conversion through spin-orbit coupling engineering, which allows us to unambiguously demonstrate orbital-current-induced spin torque, or orbital Hall torque. We find that orbital Hall torque is greatly enhanced by introducing either a rare-earth ferromagnet Gd or a Pt interfacial layer with strong spin-orbit coupling in Cr/ferromagnet structures, indicating that the orbital current generated in Cr is efficiently converted into spin current in the Gd or Pt layer. Furthermore, we show that the orbital Hall torque can facilitate the reduction of switching current of perpendicular magnetization in spin-orbit-torque-based spintronic devices.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗