Current-induced switching of a van der Waals ferromagnet at room temperature

Recent discovery of emergent magnetism in van der Waals magnetic materials (vdWMM) has broadened the material space for developing spintronic devices for energy-efficient computation. While there has been appreciable progress in vdWMM discovery, a solution for non-volatile, deterministic switching of vdWMMs at room temperature has been missing, limiting the prospects of their adoption into commercial spintronic devices. Here, we report the first demonstration of current-controlled non-volatile, deterministic magnetization switching in a vdW magnetic material at room temperature. We have achieved spin-orbit torque (SOT) switching of the PMA vdW ferromagnet Fe₃GaTe₂ using a Pt spin-Hall layer up to 320 K, with a threshold switching current density as low as \({J}_{{{{{{\rm{sw}}}}}}}=\) $J_{\mathrm{sw}}=$ 1.69 \(\times\) $\times$ 10⁶ A cm⁻² at room temperature. We have also quantitatively estimated the anti-damping-like SOT efficiency of our Fe₃GaTe₂/Pt bilayer system to be \({\xi }_{{{{{{\rm{DL}}}}}}}=0.093\) ${\xi }_{\mathrm{DL}}=0.093$ , using the second harmonic Hall voltage measurement technique. These results mark a crucial step in making vdW magnetic materials a viable choice for the development of scalable, energy-efficient spintronic devices.