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We demonstrate spin-orbit torque (SOT) switching of amorphous CoTb single layer films with perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA). The switching sustains even the film thickness is above 10 nm, where the critical switching current density keeps almost constant. Without the need of overcoming the strong interfacial Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction caused by the heavy metal, a quite low assistant field of ~20 Oe is sufficient to realize the fully switching. The SOT effective field decreases and undergoes a sign change with the decrease of the Tb-concentration, implying that a combination of the spin Hall effect from both Co and Tb as well as an asymmetric spin current absorption accounts for the SOT switching mechanism. Our findings would advance the use of magnetic materials with bulk PMA for energy-efficient and thermal-stable non-volatile memories, and add a different dimension for understanding the ordering and asymmetry in amorphous thin films., Comment: 17 pages, 4 figures, Phys. Rev. B 101, 214418 (2020)

Synthetic antiferromagnets (SAF) have been proposed to replace ferromagnets in magnetic memory devices to reduce the stray field, increase the storage density and improve the thermal stability. Here we investigate the spin-orbit torque in a perpendicularly magnetized Pt/[Co/Pd]/Ru/[Co/Pd] SAF structure, which exhibits completely compensated magnetization and an exchange coupling field up to 2100 Oe. The magnetizations of two Co/Pd layers can be switched between two antiparallel states simultaneously by spin-orbit torque. The magnetization switching can be read out due to much stronger spin-orbit coupling at bottom Pt/[Co/Pd] interface compared to its upper counterpart without Pt. Both experimental and theoretical analyses unravel that the torque efficiency of antiferromagnetic coupled stacks is significantly higher than the ferromagnetic counterpart, making the critical switching current of SAF comparable to the conventional single ferromagnet. Besides adding an important dimension to spin-orbit torque, the efficient switching of completely compensated SAF might advance magnetic memory devices with high density, high speed and low power consumption., Comment: 25 pages, 5 figures, accepted by Phys. Rev. B

Using an approximate time-dependent density functional theory method, we calculate the absorption and luminescence spectra for hydrogen passivated silicon nanoscale structures with large aspect ratio. The effect of electron confinement in axial and radial directions is systematically investigated. Excited state relaxation leads to significant Stokes shifts for short nanorods with lengths less than 2 nm, but has little effect on the luminescence intensity. The formation of self-trapped excitons is likewise observed for short nanostructures only; longer wires exhibit fully delocalized excitons with neglible geometrical distortion at the excited state minimum., Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures

A promising material for hydrogen storage at room temperature-Al doped graphene was proposed theoretically by using density functional theory calculation. Hydrogen storage capacity of 5.13 wt% was predicted at T = 300 K and P = 0.1 Gpa with adsorption energy Eb = -0.260 eV/H2. This is close to the target of 6 wt% and satisfies the requirement of immobilization hydrogen with Eb of -0.2 ~ -0.4 eV/H2 at ambient temperature and modest pressure for commercial applications specified by U.S. Department of Energy. It is believed that the doped Al varies the electronic structures of both C and H2. The bands of H2 overlapping with those of Al and C synchronously are the underlying mechanism of hydrogen storage capacity enhancement., Comment: 20 pages, 2 tables, and 5 figures