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Ferrimagnetic insulators with perpendicular magnetic anisotropy are of particular interest for spintronics due to their ability to mitigate current shunting in spin–orbit torque heterostructures and enable low switching energy, high-density storage magnetic devices. Rare earth iron garnet Tm3Fe5O12 (TmIG) is one such material where prior studies have shown that the negative magnetostriction coefficient and isotropic in-plane tensile strain enable the magnetoelastic anisotropy to overcome the demagnetization energy and stabilize perpendicular magnetic anisotropy. However, the investigation of the tunability of the magnetoelastic anisotropy between thin films that possess perpendicular magnetization and quantification of the magnetoelastic constants has not been reported. Here, we quantify the evolution of magnetic anisotropy in (111)-oriented, epitaxial, 17 nm thick thin films of TmIG using a systematic variation of in-plane epitaxial strain (ranging 0.49%–1.83%) imposed by a suite of commercially available garnet substrates. Within the confines of the imposed strain range and deposition condition, the distortion from cubic symmetry is found to be approximately linear within the in-plane strain. The magnetic anisotropy field can be tuned by a factor of 14 in this strain range. The magnetoelastic anisotropy constant, B2, is found to be approximately constant (∼2500 kJ m−3) and more than 2× larger than the reported bulk value (∼1200 kJ m−3) for a cubic distortion between 90.17° and 90.71°. B2 is found to decrease at cubic distortions of 90.74° and larger. Our results highlight strain engineering, and its limitations, for control of perpendicular magnetic anisotropy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent experiments have shown the ability to introduce an anisotropy energy to the energy landscape of a thin-film nanomagnet through the use of mechanical strain. Assuming this strain-induced anisotropy is large enough, the low-energy state of the nanomagnet is altered and can be used to initialize the magnetization along a given axis. Utilizing this effect, we propose a more energy efficient method of nanomagnet reversal through spin-transfer torque (STT). This is accomplished by first initializing the magnetization to a high-energy state and then applying a short current pulse to nudge the magnetization in the appropriate energy basin. Using extensive numerical simulations, we qualitatively analyze this type of reversal and find the optimal parameters for reliable functionality while in the presence of thermal noise. We demonstrate that despite negating the initial portion of nominal STT reversal, where the STT must fight against the damping torque of the initial energy-basin, the magnitude of spin current required for our proposed strain-mediated reversal is equivalent to the nominal case. However, the strain-meditated reversal is beneficial by minimizing the spin-current pulsewidth necessary for reliable operation allowing for large energy savings. Assuming the strain-anisotropy is significantly larger than the nanomagnet’s internal free-axis anisotropy, strain-mediated reversals offer a 10 \times energy reduction over nominal STT reversals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]