Strain-programmable van der Waals magnetic tunnel junctions

Published

June 3, 2025

Author(s)

John Cenker, Dmitry Ovchinnikov, Harvey Yang, Daniel Chica, Catherine Zhu, Jiaqi Cai, Geoffrey Diederich, Zhaoyu Liu (刘曌玉), Xiaoyang Zhu, Xavier Roy, Ting Cao, Matthew Daniels, Jiun-Haw Chu, Di Xiao, Xiaodong Xu

Abstract

Magnetic tunnel junctions (MTJs) are foundational spintronics devices with applications ranging from stable magnetic memory to emerging stochastic computing schemes. Integrating van der Waals magnets into these devices could enable the realization of atomically thin MTJs with unique functionalities. Here, we demonstrate that the strain-tunable magnetism of the layered semiconductor CrSBr offers a new type of programmable MTJ operation. Switching the CrSBr tunnel barrier from antiferromagnetic (AFM) to ferromagnetic (FM) order by strain generates a giant tunneling magnetoresistance ratio without an external magnetic field. In addition to the purely FM and AFM states, we observe a variety of intermediate magnetic states consisting of both FM- and AFM-coupled layers. The layer-dependent magnetization of these states can be actively switched via the application of strain pulses. Alternatively, finely adjusting the static strain to minimize the energy difference between AFM and FM interlayer coupling results in stochastic switching with a strain-tunable sigmoidal response curve. Our results demonstrate new approaches for manipulating layered two-dimensional (2D) magnetism toward spintronic devices.

Citation

Newton

Volume

1

Issue

5

Pub Type

Journals

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.newton.2025.100130

Local Download

Citation

Cenker, J. , Ovchinnikov, D. , Yang, H. , Chica, D. , Zhu, C. , Cai, J. , Diederich, G. , Liu (刘曌玉), Z. , Zhu, X. , Roy, X. , Cao, T. , Daniels, M. , Chu, J. , Xiao, D. and Xu, X. (2025), Strain-programmable van der Waals magnetic tunnel junctions, Newton, [online], https://doi.org/10.1016/j.newton.2025.100130, https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=935582 (Accessed July 12, 2025)