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 sw = 1.69 $$\times$$ × 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 $${\xi }_{{{{{{\rm{DL}}}}}}}=0.093$$ ξ 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.