Extremely Large Anisotropy of Effective Gilbert Damping in Half-Metallic CrO2.

Half-metals are a class of quantum materials with 100% spin polarization at the Fermi level and have attracted a lot of attention for future spintronic device applications. CrO2 is one of the most promising half-metal candidates for which the electrical and magnetic properties have been intensively studied in the last several decades. Here, we report the observation of a giant anisotropy (∼1600%) of effective Gilbert damping in the single-crystalline half-metallic (100)-CrO2 thin films, which is significantly larger than the values observed on conventional ferromagnetic Fe and CoFe thin films. Furthermore, the effective Gilbert damping exhibits opposite temperature-dependent behaviors below 50 K with magnetic field along the [010] direction and near the [001] direction. These experimental results suggest the strong spin-orbit coupling anisotropy of the half-metallic CrO2 and might pave the way for future magnonic computing applications.