Electric-Field Control of Nonvolatile Magnetization inCo40Fe40B20/Pb(Mg1/3

Abstract

We report a large and nonvolatile bipolar-electric-field-controlled magnetization at room temperature in a Co(40)Fe(40)B(20)/Pb(Mg(1/3)Nb(2/3))(0.7)Ti(0.3)O(3) structure, which exhibits an electric-field-controlled looplike magnetization. Investigations on the ferroelectric domains and crystal structures with in situ electric fields reveal that the effect is related to the combined action of 109° ferroelastic domain switching and the absence of magnetocrystalline anisotropy in Co(40)Fe(40)B(20). This work provides a route to realize large and nonvolatile magnetoelectric coupling at room temperature and is significant for applications.

Research Update: Electrical manipulation of magnetism through strain-mediated magnetoelectric coupling in multiferroic heterostructures

“…However, this does not meet present development of information storage which requests nonvolatility. 34 Recently, Zhang et al 21 have demonstrated a nonvolatile electrical manipulation of magnetism in CoFeB/(001) PMN-PT ( Fig. 2(a)) that differs from the previous work.…”

“…The piezoresponse force microscopy (PFM) measurements were also performed to investigate the FE domain structures, revealing the existence of these domain switchings. 21 It should be mentioned that the in-plane lattice parameters of r1/r3 and r2/r4 are different along the [110] direction so that different domain switching will induce various interesting strain states as illustrated in Fig. 3 To obtain the value of the net 109 • switching in this special type of PMN-PT (100) substrate, reciprocal space mapping (RSM) was carried out to study the distribution of FE domains under various electric fields due to their different lattice parameters (Fig.…”

“…Moreover, the evolution of magnetization under electric fields for nanomagnet depends strongly on the FE domain state below it 32,61 and is different from that of the continuous FM film. 21,23,56 Despite all this, experimental realization of this proposition will be an important progress for the purely electrical modulation of magnetism and for new generation of spintronic devices.…”

Film size-dependent voltage-modulated magnetism in multiferroic heterostructures

“…Specifically, how do we understand the influence of the FE domain (ferroelastic) switching on both the static magnetic domain (wall) morphology and its dynamic evolution process? Recent works have reported such mutual magnetic-FE domain coupling in FE crystal-based multiferroic heterostructures, such as CoFe/(001)BTO [67,68,96], CoFeB/(001)PMN-PT [97], and more recently in CoFe 2 O 4 (or NiFe 2 O 4 )/(100)BTO [69], but the results in multiferroic magnetic/FE composite thin films are still lacking.…”

Electrically controlled non-volatile switching of magnetism in multiferroic heterostructures via engineered ferroelastic domain states

“…[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10] Multiferroic heterostructures, simultaneously exhibiting ferromagnetism, ferroelectricity and ferroelasticity, have attracted great interest due to the strong strainmediated magnetoelectric (ME) coupling and shown promising applications for tunable magnetic devices. [11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29] More interestingly, in these structures, a single control parameter of voltage is used to induce a lattice strain through the converse piezoelectric effect in the ferroelectric phase, which in turn tailors the magnetic properties in the mechanically coupled magnetic phase through the magnetoelastic effect. 25,[30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41] Thus, devices made of such heterostructures are ultrafast, compact, quiet, energy efficient and susceptible to be integrated into electronic circuits.…”