Influence of the thermal contact resistance in current-induced domain wall depinning
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Publication Date
2017-07-18Journal Title
Journal of Physics D - Applied Physics
ISSN
0022-3727
Publisher
Institute of Physics Publishing
Volume
50
Issue
32
Number
325001
Type
Article
This Version
AM
Metadata
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López, C., Ramos, E., Muñoz, M., Kar-Narayan, S., Mathur, N., & Prieto, J. (2017). Influence of the thermal contact resistance in current-induced domain wall depinning. Journal of Physics D - Applied Physics, 50 (32. 325001)https://doi.org/10.1088/1361-6463/aa7a9c
Abstract
In this work we study the influence of the thermal contact resistance on the temperature of a typical nanostripe used in current induced magnetic domain wall movement or depinning. The thermal contact resistance arises from an imperfect heat transport across the interface between the metallic ferromagnetic nanostripe and the substrate. We show that this parameter, which is likely non-zero in any experimental device, increases the temperature in the nanostripe considerably. When the current is injected in the nanostripe in nanosecond long pulses, the larger temperature also implies a reduction of the effective current density delivered by the pulse generator. Both, the thermal contact resistance and the dynamic response of the pulse generator, are usually neglected in theoretical estimations of the influence of spin transfer torque on domain wall displacement and depinning. Here we show that only if the thermal contact resistance and the electric resistivity of the ferromagnetic nanostripe are optimized to the best values reported in the bibliography, the Joule heating may not be so crucial for current densities of the order of 108 A/cm2. Also, the use of physical constrictions (notch) to pin the magnetic domain wall may complicate the interpretation of the results as they always come together with relevant thermal gradients.
Keywords
nanowire, domain wall, joule heating
Sponsorship
This work has been partially funded by the Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad through the projects MAT2014-52477-C5-1-P and MAT2014-52477-C5-3-P and by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council through grant code EPSRC EP/E03389X.
Funder references
EPSRC (EP/E03389X/1)
Royal Society (dh110046)
Identifiers
External DOI: https://doi.org/10.1088/1361-6463/aa7a9c
This record's URL: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/267317
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