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Domain wall pinning and domain wall resistivity in notched La0.7Sr0.3MnO3 nanostructures

Yao Junxiang1,*, Maurits E. K. Geenen1, Harm A. Bakker2, Leon Abelmann3, and Jan Aarts1,†

  • 1Huygens-Kamerlingh Onnes Laboratory, Leiden Institute of Physics, Leiden University. P.O. Box 9504, 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands
  • 2MESA+ Institute for Nanotechnology, University of Twente, P.O. Box 217, 7500 AE Enschede, The Netherlands
  • 3Department of microelectronics, Technical University Delft, Mekelweg 4, 2628 CD Delft, The Netherlands

  • *Contact author: yao@Physics.LeidenUniv.nl
  • †Contact author: aarts@Physics.LeidenUniv.nl
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Phys. Rev. Materials 9, 084414 – Published 26 August, 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/np4m-j4b7

Abstract

Creation and manipulation of magnetic domain walls (DWs) are a core subject of research in developing prototype devices for spintronic applications. DWs can be created artificially and moved by applying either a magnetic field or an electric current, as has been extensively investigated. Here, we study the DW pinning and depinning in half-metallic ferromagnetic La0.7Sr0.3MnO3 nanostructures with a notch that is about 90% of the width of the wire. By measuring the magnetoresistance of the notched wires while sweeping the magnetic field, we unambiguously observe DW pinning and depinning from 10 to 300 K. Analysis of the temperature dependence reveals that both ΔR (the DW resistance) and ΔR/R0 (R0 is the resistance at zero field) are proportional to the temperature. The DW resistivity is calculated to be of the order of 10−17Ωm2 at 10 K and 10−15Ωm2 at 300 K. The latter value agrees with the reported intrinsic DW resistivity in films. In addition, we find approximately constant ΔR and ΔR/R0 for widths from 5 down to 1.8µm and a pronounced increase in both quantities when the width goes down to 755 nm. With the extracted magnetocrystalline anisotropy parameters from the measurements of the remanent magnetization and the magnetic torque as function of angle of the magnetic field with respect to the substrate normal, we further perform micromagnetic simulations and obtain results consistent with the experimental data. Our work may promote designing relevant prototypes and may constitute a platform to explore the effect of spin torque transfer on DWs.

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Phys. Rev. Materials 9, 084414– Published 26 August, 2025
  • Received 5 August 2024
  • Accepted 12 June 2025
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.

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