Abstract
Spintronics based on ferromagnets has enabled the development of microwave oscillators and diodes. To achieve even faster operation, antiferromagnets hold great promise despite their challenging manipulation. So far, controlling antiferromagnetic order with microwave currents remains elusive. Here we induce the coherent rotation of antiferromagnetic spins in a Weyl antiferromagnet W/Mn3Sn epitaxial bilayer by DC spin–orbit torque. We show the efficient coupling of this spin rotation with microwave current. The coupled dynamics produce a DC anomalous Hall voltage through rectification, which we coin the antiferromagnetic spin-torque diode effect. Unlike in ferromagnetic systems, the output voltage shows minimal dependence on frequency because of the stabilization of the precession cone angle by exchange interactions. Between 10 GHz and 30 GHz, the output voltage decreases by only 10%. Numerical simulations further reveal that the rectification signals arise from the fast frequency modulation of chiral spin rotation by microwave spin–orbit torque. These results may help the development of high-speed microwave devices for next-generation telecommunication applications.
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The data of this work are included in the published article and its Supplementary Information. Additional raw data are available from the corresponding authors upon request.
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The calculation and simulation codes are available from the corresponding authors upon reasonable request.
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Acknowledgements
We thank K. Kondou of RIKEN for discussion. X-ray diffraction measurements, chemical composition analysis and electrode deposition were performed at the X-ray laboratory, the electron microscope section and Q-NanoLab of the Institute for Solid State Physics, The University of Tokyo, respectively. The synchrotron radiation experiments were performed at the BL25SU of SPring-8 with the approval of the Japan Synchrotron Radiation Research Institute (JASRI) (proposal no. 2022A1072). This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI (nos. JP19H05825, JP21H04437, JP22H00290, 22H04964, 23H01833 and 24H02234), JST CREST (JPMJCR18T3), JST-Mirai Program (JPMJMI20A1), MEXT Initiative to Establish Next-Generation Novel Integrated Circuit Centers (X-NICS) (no. JPJ011438), JST-PRESTO (no. JPMJPR20L7), JST-ASPIRE (no. JPMJAP2317) and Spintronics Research Network of Japan (Spin-RNJ). The Institute for Quantum Matter, an Energy Frontier Research Center, was funded by DOE, Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences, under award no. DE-SC0024469.
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S.S. and S.M. conceived and designed the experiments. S.S. made the devices and performed electrical measurements. S.S., T.H., H.K., M.S. and D.N.-H. developed epitaxial Mn3Sn thin films, and Y.H. and K.Y. fabricated polycrystalline Mn3Sn thin films. S.S. performed microwave experiments with help of T.Y., S.T. and T. Nozaki. S.S., Y.K. and T. Nakamura conducted X-ray magnetic circular dichroism measurements. S.S., T. Nomoto and R.A. performed numerical calculations. S.S., S.N. and S.M. wrote the paper with inputs from all the authors.
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Sakamoto, S., Nomoto, T., Higo, T. et al. Antiferromagnetic spin-torque diode effect in a kagome Weyl semimetal. Nat. Nanotechnol. 20, 216–221 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41565-024-01820-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41565-024-01820-0
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