Multiple Magnetoionic Regimes in Ta/Co 20 Fe 60 B 20 / Hf O 2

In ${\mathrm{Ta/(Co,Fe)B/HfO}}_{2}$ stacks, a gate voltage drives, in a nonvolatile way, the system from an underoxidized state exhibiting in-plane anisotropy (IPA) to an optimum oxidation level resulting in perpendicular anisotropy (PMA) and further into an overoxidized state with IPA. The $\mathrm{IPA}\phantom{\rule{0.1em}{0ex}}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}\phantom{\rule{0.1em}{0ex}}\mathrm{PMA}$ regime is found to be significantly faster than the $\mathrm{PMA}\phantom{\rule{0.1em}{0ex}}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}\phantom{\rule{0.1em}{0ex}}\mathrm{IPA}$ regime, whereas only the latter shows full reversibility under the same gate voltages. The effective damping parameter also shows a marked dependence with gate voltage in the $\mathrm{IPA}\phantom{\rule{0.1em}{0ex}}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}\phantom{\rule{0.1em}{0ex}}\mathrm{PMA}$ regime, going from 0.029 to 0.012, and only a modest increase to 0.014 in the $\mathrm{PMA}\phantom{\rule{0.1em}{0ex}}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}\phantom{\rule{0.1em}{0ex}}\mathrm{IPA}$ regime. The existence of two magnetoionic regimes has been linked to a difference in the chemical environment of the anchoring points of oxygen species added to underoxidized or overoxidized layers. Our results show that multiple magnetoionic regimes can exist in a single device and that their characterization is of great importance for the design of high-performance spintronics devices.