Co-Graphene heterostructures with giant perpendicular magnetocrystalline anisotropy

Ferromagnetic electrodes possessing a perpendicular magnetic easy axis is a key towards realizing next generation high density non-volatile memory and logic chips with high thermal stability. To obtain perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA), usually heavy metals which have large spin-orbit coupling are needed. But those metals have large magnetic damping constant which will enhance the critical switching current. To overcome the issue, we propose a heavy-metal-free system, Co/ Graphene. Graphene has demonstrated outstanding physical properties such as exceptional electrical, thermal and mechanical properties, as well as its very long spin diffusion length up to room temperature. Especially, considering its perfect spin filtering [1-2], Co/Graphene can be very promising for the STT-MRAM application if large PMA can be realized.