Data availability
The data that support the plots in this paper and other findings of this study are available from the corresponding authors upon reasonable request. The scientific colour maps developed by Crameri et al.67 are used in this study to prevent visual distortion of the data and exclusion of readers with colour vision deficiencies68. Source data are provided with this paper.
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Acknowledgements
We acknowledge useful discussions with S. Shim on scanning nitrogen vacancy microscopy and C. Phatak on TEM analysis.
Funding
This research was primarily supported as part of the Center for Energy-Efficient Magnonics (CEEMag)—an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the US Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences (BES), under award no. DE-AC02-76SF00515 (experimental design, electrical measurements, material growth, nitrogen vacancy microscopy, theoretical analysis, and data analysis). This research was also supported by the US National Science Foundation (NSF) through award nos. CNS-2425538 (pulse-width dependence and energy barrier measurement at Northwestern University; electrical measurements at UT Austin), DMR-2308691 (TEM analysis and charge transport characterization at Northwestern University), DMR-2425567 (theoretical modelling at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln), and ECCS-2331109 (theoretical modelling at Purdue University). M.H. thanks the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) for financial support via SNSF Postdoc.Mobility grant no. 222234 (theoretical analysis). L.D.Y. and J.M.R. acknowledge support from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research under award no. FA9550-23-1-0042 (DFT simulations and theoretical analysis). W.R. was supported by the Superior Energy-efficient Materials and Devices (SUPREME) Center—one of seven centers in the JUMP 2.0, a Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) program sponsored by DARPA (Wannier models and theoretical analysis). A.M., M.C. and G.F. acknowledge support via contract no. 2025-40-I.0 (SPINAM), funded by the Italian Space Agency within the call ‘Studi di concetti innovativi di sistemi spaziali’ (micromagnetic simulations). This work also made use of the EPIC facility (RRID: SCR_026361) of Northwestern University’s NUANCE Center, which has received support from the Shyne Resource (NSF grant no. ECCS-2025633), the International Institute of Nanotechnology (IIN; grant no. NIH-S10OD026871) and Northwestern’s MRSEC programme (grant no. NSF DMR-2308691).
Author information
Author notes
These authors contributed equally: Jaimin Kang, Mohammad Hamdi
Authors and Affiliations
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA
Jaimin Kang, Mohammad Hamdi, Shun Kong Cheung, Eric Matt, Jordan Athas, Sevdenur Arpaci, Mark C. Hersam & Pedram Khalili Amiri
Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA
Lin-Ding Yuan, William Rogers, Peter G. Lim, M. S. Nicholas Tey, Antoine Devincenti, Vinod K. Sangwan, Jennifer Fowlie, Vinayak P. Dravid, Mark C. Hersam & James M. Rondinelli
Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE, USA
Mohamed Elekhtiar & Evgeny Y. Tsymbal
Applied Physics Program, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA
Eric Matt, William Rogers, Peter G. Lim, Sevdenur Arpaci, Jennifer Fowlie, Vinayak P. Dravid, Mark C. Hersam, James M. Rondinelli & Pedram Khalili Amiri
Department of Electrical and Information Engineering, Politecnico di Bari, Bari, Italy
Andrea Meo & Mario Carpentieri
School of Applied and Engineering Physics, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA
Anthony D’Addario & Gregory D. Fuchs
Department of Physics and Astronomy, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA
Shiva T. Konakanchi
Western Digital Corporation, San Jose, CA, USA
Lei Wan, Sanjay C. Mehta & Jordan A. Katine
Chandra Family Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA
Nicholas Zogbi & Jean Anne C. Incorvia
Microelectronics Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA
Nicholas Zogbi & Jean Anne C. Incorvia
Elmore Family School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA
Pramey Upadhyaya
Department of Chemistry, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA
Mark C. Hersam
Department of Mathematical and Computer Sciences, Physical Sciences and Earth Sciences, University of Messina, Messina, Italy
Giovanni Finocchio
Authors
- Jaimin Kang
- Mohammad Hamdi
- Shun Kong Cheung
- Lin-Ding Yuan
- Mohamed Elekhtiar
- Eric Matt
- William Rogers
- Andrea Meo
- Peter G. Lim
- M. S. Nicholas Tey
- Anthony D’Addario
- Shiva T. Konakanchi
- Jordan Athas
- Sevdenur Arpaci
- Antoine Devincenti
- Lei Wan
- Sanjay C. Mehta
- Nicholas Zogbi
- Vinod K. Sangwan
- Jean Anne C. Incorvia
- Jennifer Fowlie
- Pramey Upadhyaya
- Mario Carpentieri
- Vinayak P. Dravid
- Mark C. Hersam
- Jordan A. Katine
- Gregory D. Fuchs
- Giovanni Finocchio
- Evgeny Y. Tsymbal
- James M. Rondinelli
- Pedram Khalili Amiri
Contributions
P.K.A., J.K. and M.H. conceived the idea. P.K.A. designed the AATJ material stack and devices. L.W., S.C.M. and J.A.K. fabricated the devices. J.K., S.K.C., M.S.N.T. and M.H. performed electrical measurements with support from J.A., S.A., M.C.H., E.M., A.D., J.F. and V.K.S. M.H. and J.K. designed the nitrogen vacancy magnetometry sample. M.H. and E.M. grew and characterized the nitrogen vacancy magnetometry sample with support from J.K. A.D.’A. and G.D.F. performed nitrogen vacancy centre microscopy. P.G.L. performed the TEM analysis with support from J.K., M.H., V.P.D. and M.C.H. M.H., J.K. and E.M. performed the XRD and SQUID magnetometry measurements. N.Z., J.A.C.I., J.K. and S.K.C. performed the comparison of two- and three-terminal switching geometries. M.H. developed the theoretical description of OTT. M.H., L.D.Y., M.E., W.R., E.Y.T. and J.M.R. performed the DFT calculations and theoretical analysis. A.M., M.C. and G.F. developed the micromagnetic code to simulate the three sublattice model. A.M., M.C. and G.F. performed the micromagnetic simulations with input from M.H. and P.K.A. S.T.K. and P.U. performed the theoretical energy barrier calculation. J.K., M.H. and P.K.A. wrote the manuscript with contributions from all the other authors. All authors discussed the results, contributed to the data analysis, and commented on the manuscript. The study was performed under the leadership of P.K.A.
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Correspondence to Jaimin Kang, Mohammad Hamdi or Pedram Khalili Amiri.
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Extended data figures and tables
Extended Data Fig. 1 Two-terminal current-induced switching of AATJs with different diameters of pillars.
a-d, Representative current-induced switching measurements performed with the different diameters of 50 nm (a), 75 nm (b), 100 nm (c) and 200 nm (d).
Extended Data Fig. 2 NV magnetometry.
a, Scanning NV magnetometry measurements performed 50 nm above a MgO (100)/PtMn3 (100)/Pt (5 nm) sample. b, Corresponding Fourier transform of the NV magnetometry measurements.
Extended Data Fig. 3 Calculation of energy barrier of the PtMn3 free layer.
a, Schematic of the unit cell of PtMn3 viewed along [111] showing two equilibrium configurations. The Kagome plane is the x-y plane. b, Energy landscape of a 100 nm wide and 7 nm thick nanodot as a function of the rigid rotation of the PtMn3 spin motif from panel a, depicting a two-fold ground state with an energy barrier of Δ ≈ 39 kT.
Extended Data Fig. 4 Sublattice site-spin projected conduction channels as a function of k|| for PtMn3.
a, b, Conduction channels, projected onto the site-spin direction of the corresponding sublattice for the spin minority (a) and spin-majority (b) channels.
Extended Data Fig. 5 Macrospin simulation of OTT switching in AATJ.
a, Schematic of the simulated three-sublattice system. Black, blue, red and green arrows indicate the sublattice magnetization in the free layer, spin polarization of the sublattices in the fixed layer, intra- and inter-sublattice torques acting on sublattice 3 in the free layer for \({\beta }_{1}={\beta }_{2}\), and total torques acting on the respective sublattices for \({\beta }_{1}\ne {\beta }_{2}\). Gray dashed lines indicate the respective easy axis of a given sublattice. \(\phi \) is a small misalignment angle (exaggerated here) between the respective sublattice magnetizations in the free layer and sublattice spin polarizations in the fixed layer. b, c, Time-dependent x-component (b) and y-component (c) of the three sublattice magnetizations. Solid (dashed) lines represent the switching via a direct (reverse) current from AP to P (P to AP) states.
Extended Data Fig. 6 Octupole-projected conduction channels as a function of k|| for PtMn3.
a, Octupole minority, b, octupole majority and, c, the net octupole polarization-resolved conduction channels.
Extended Data Fig. 7 Theoretical modelling of the effect of interface termination on TMR in PtMn3/vacuum/PtMn3 AATJs.
a, Schematic of an AATJ where the top PtMn3 layer has a lateral shift of \({{\boldsymbol{d}}}_{\parallel }\) with respect to the bottom layer. b, c, \({{\boldsymbol{k}}}_{\parallel }\)- resolved transmission for parallel \({T}_{P}({{\boldsymbol{k}}}_{\parallel }\)) (b) and antiparallel \({T}_{{AP}}\)(\({{\boldsymbol{k}}}_{\parallel }\)) (c) alignment of antiferromagnetic PtMn3 layers for perfect matching of the magnetic interface structure for top and bottom electrodes \(({{\boldsymbol{d}}}_{\parallel }=0)\). d, \({TMR}=({T}_{P}-{T}_{{AP}})/{T}_{{AP}}\) as a function of lateral shift \({{\boldsymbol{d}}}_{\parallel }=({d}_{x},{d}_{y}).\) e, Histogram of the distribution of TMR ratios defined as \({{TMR}}_{a}=|{T}_{P}-{T}_{{AP}}|/\min ({T}_{P,}{T}_{{AP}})\).
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Kang, J., Hamdi, M., Cheung, S.K. et al. Octupole-driven spin torque switching of antiferromagnetic tunnel junctions. Nature (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-11172-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-11172-5