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A simple, reliable and field-free spin orbit torque (SOT)-induced magnetization switching is a key ingredient for the development of the electrical controllable spintronic devices. Recently, the SOT induced deterministic switching of the CoPt single layer has attracts a lot of interests, as it could simplifies the structure and add new flexibility in the design of SOT devices, compared with the Ferromagnet/Heavy metal bilayer counterparts. Unfortunately, under the field-free switching strategies used nowadays, the switching of the CoPt layer is often partial, which sets a major obstacle for the practical applications. In this study, by growing the CoPt on vicinal substrates, we could achieve the full-scale (100% switching ratio) field-free switching of the CoPt layer. We demonstrate that when grown on vicinal substrates, the magnetic easy axis of the CoPt could be tilted from the normal direction of the film plane; the strength of Dzyaloshinskii–Moriya interaction (DMI) would be also be tuned as well. Micromagnetic simulation further reveal that the field-free switching stems from tilted magnetic anisotropy induced by the vicinal substrate, while the enhancement of DMI help reducing the critical switching current. In addition, we also found that the vicinal substrates could also enhance the SOT efficiency. With such simplestructure, full-scale switching, tunable DMI and SOT efficiency, our results provide a new knob for the design SOT-MRAM and future spintronic devices.

Current induced spin–orbit torque (SOT) switching of magnetization is a promising technology for nonvolatile spintronic memory and logic applications. In this work, we systematically investigated the effect of Ta thickness on the magnetic properties, field-free switching and SOT efficiency in a ferromagnetically coupled Co/Ta/CoFeB trilayer with perpendicular magnetic anisotropy. We found that both the anisotropy field and coercivity increase with increasing Ta thickness from 0.15 nm to 0.4 nm. With further increase of Ta thickness to 0.5 nm, two-step switching is observed, indicating that the two magnetic layers are magnetically decoupled. Measurements of pulse-current induced magnetization switching and harmonic Hall voltages show that the critical switching current density increases while the field-free switching ratio and SOT efficiency decrease with increasing Ta thickness. Both the enhanced spin memory loss and reduced interlayer exchange coupling might be responsible for the β DL decrease as the Ta spacer thickness increases. The studied structure with the incorporation of a CoFeB layer is able to realize field-free switching in the strong ferromagnetic coupling region, which may contribute to the further development of magnetic tunnel junctions for better memory applications.