Multiferroic oxide thin films and heterostructures

Abstract

Multiferroic materials promise a tantalizing perspective of novel applications in next-generation electronic, memory, and energy harvesting technologies, and at the same time they also represent a grand scientific challenge on understanding complex solid state systems with strong correlations between multiple degrees of freedom. In this review, we highlight the opportunities and obstacles in growing multiferroic thin films with chemical and structural integrity and integrating them in functional devices. Besides the magnetoelectric effect, multiferroics exhibit excellent resistant switching and photovoltaic properties, and there are plenty opportunities for them to integrate with other ferromagnetic and superconducting materials. The challenges include, but not limited, defect-related leakage in thin films, weak magnetism, and poor control on interface coupling. Although our focuses are Bi-based perovskites and rare earth manganites, the insights are also applicable to other multiferroic materials. We will also review some examples of multiferroic applications in spintronics, memory, and photovoltaic devices.

Photoassisted Electric Field Modulation of Multiple Nonvolatile Resistance States in Highly Strained Epitaxial BiFeO3 Heterostructures

“…To avoid these problems, multilevel storage that allows each unit to store multiple bits of information has been proposed. [18][19][20][21][22] Moreover, BFO is particular for its relatively narrow bandgap (<2.8 eV), which supports the PV effect in the visible range. [16,17] Based on the thickness-dependent ferroelectric domain size scaling behaviors, the formation of nanometer scale domains in very thin ferroelectric films can lead to the incomplete inversion of polarization.…”

DyMnO3: A model system of type-II multiferroics

“…Among all available multiferroic materials, type-II multiferroics of magnetic origin stand out due to the unique one-to-one correspondence between ferroelectric (FE) and magnetic orders [3][4][5][6]. The intimate coupling between the two orders gives rises to giant magnetoelectric (ME) effect, such as polarization (P) switching in multiferroics hosting a spiral spin order (SSO) [7].…”

Magnetic-field-induced dielectric behaviors and magneto-electrical coupling of multiferroic compounds containing cobalt ferrite/barium calcium titanate composite fibers

“…Multiferroics, which refer to the functional materials that possess two or more properties of the ferromagnetism, ferroelectricity and ferroelasticity over a certain range of temperature, are important members of electronic materials family because of their promising applications in advanced electronic devices [3], [4], [5]. Among multiferroics, functional materials possessing electro-magneto-coupling are known as magnetoelectric (ME) materials [6], [7], which have wide and important applications in the fields of microwave devices and sensors for magnetic field detection [3], [4], [5], [8], [9], [10].…”