Electrical switching of antiferromagnetic Mn$_2$Au and the role of thermal activation

Abstract

Electrical manipulation of antiferromagnets with specific symmetries offers the prospect of creating novel, antiferromagnetic spintronic devices. Such devices aim to make use of the insensitivity to external magnetic fields and the ultrafast dynamics at the picosecond timescale intrinsic to antiferromagnets. The possibility to electrically switch antiferromagnets was first predicted for Mn2Au and then experimentally observed in tetragonal CuMnAs. Here, we report on the electrical switching and detection of the Neel order in epitaxial films of Mn2Au. The exponential dependences of the switching amplitude on the current density and the temperature are explained by a macroscopic thermal activation model taking into account the effect of the Joule heating in Hall cross devices and we observe that the thermal activation plays a key role in the reorientation process of the Neel order. Our model analysis shows that the electrically set Neel-state is long-term stable at room temperature, paving the way for practical applications in memory devices.