High-entropy alloy (HEA) is a family of metallic materials with nearly equal partitions of five or more metals, which might possess mechanical and transport properties that are different from conventional binary or tertiary alloys. In this work, we demonstrate current-induced spin-orbit torque (SOT) magnetization switching in a Ta-Nb-Hf-Zr-Ti HEA-based magnetic heterostructure with perpendicular magnetic anisotropy. The maximum dampinglike SOT efficiency from this particular HEA-based magnetic heterostructure is further determined to be $|{\zeta }_{\mathrm{DL}}^{\mathrm{HEA}}|\approx 0.033$ by hysteresis-loop-shift measurements, while that for the Ta control sample is $|{\zeta }_{\mathrm{DL}}^{\text{Ta}}|\approx 0.04$. Our results indicate that HEA-based magnetic heterostructures can serve as an alternative group of potential candidates for SOT device applications due to the possibility of tuning buffer-layer properties with more than two constituent elements.

• Received 15 May 2017

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevApplied.8.044005