Observation of spin-orbit magnetoresistance in CoFeB/heavy metal/MgO with existence of both spin Hall effect and Edelstein effect
In this paper, we report the observation of spin-orbit magnetoresistance (SOMR) in ferromagnetic metal/heavy metal/MgO system. We measure the magnetoresistance as the function of the thickness of heavy metal (HM) for CoFeB/HM/MgO and CoFeB/HM films where HM = Pt and Ta. Besides the conventional spin Hall magnetoresistance (SMR) peak, the evidence of the SOMR is indicated by another peak of the MR ratio when the thickness of HM is around 1 ~ 2 nm for CoFeB/HM/MgO films, which is absent for CoFeB/HM films. We speculate the SOMR observed in our experiment originates from the spin-orbit coupling at the HM/MgO interface. We give the boundary conditions of our samples and calculate the theoretical magnetoresistance based on spin diffusion equation. Based on the theoretical results, we can explain the two peaks we observe separately comes from the spin current generated by spin Hall effect and by Edelstein effect.
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