Strain-controlled magnetic domain wall propagation in hybrid piezoelectric/ferromagnetic structures

Abstract

The control of magnetic order in nanoscale devices underpins many proposals for integrating spintronics concepts into conventional electronics. A key challenge lies in finding an energy-efficient means of control, as power dissipation remains an important factor limiting future miniaturization of integrated circuits. One promising approach involves magnetoelectric coupling in magnetostrictive/piezoelectric systems, where induced strains can bear directly on the magnetic anisotropy. While such processes have been demonstrated in several multiferroic heterostructures, the incorporation of such complex materials into practical geometries has been lacking. Here we demonstrate the possibility of generating sizeable anisotropy changes, through induced strains driven by applied electric fields, in hybrid piezoelectric/spin-valve nanowires. By combining magneto-optical Kerr effect and magnetoresistance measurements, we show that domain wall propagation fields can be doubled under locally applied strains. These results highlight the prospect of constructing low-power domain wall gates for magnetic logic devices.

Unlocking Bloch-type chirality in ultrathin magnets through uniaxial strain

“…The results introduce rich possibilities to influence DW dynamics by combining intrinsic phenomena such as spin Hall effects [18][19][20][21]36,37 , Rashba effects 18,36,38,39 or the DMI 15,18 , not only with magnetoelastically induced anisotropy (as we have shown in this work), but also with piezo-induced strain 40 ARTICLE nanowire shape-induced anisotropy 42 or external magnetic fields [19][20][21]43,44 , which may open up new opportunities to design spin-orbitronics devices.…”

Combining ferromagnetic resonator and digital image correlation to study the strain induced resonance tunability in magnetoelectric heterostructures

“…Many ME systems based on ferromagnetic/ferroelectric heterostructures have been developed, encompassing voltage-tunable microwave signal processing devices [3][4][5], magnetoelectric random access memory devices [6][7][8][9] and strain-control GMR devices [10][11][12]. For all these kinds of systems, the properties are controlled via the elastic voltage-induced strains transmitted from the ferroelectric medium to the ferromagnetic one.…”

Electric-field switching of perpendicularly magnetized multilayers

“…32 Another popular approach towards the engineering of electric-field-controlled magnetic properties is based on interfacial mechanical strain coupling between ferromagnetic and ferroelectric materials in multiferroic hybrids. [4][5][6]8,10,12,[21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31]38 In this case, transfer of lattice strains across interfaces alters the magnetoelastic anisotropy of a ferromagnetic layer via inverse magnetostriction. Anisotropy modulations of more than one order of magnitude have been obtained, which has enabled full electric-field control of the magnetization orientation in two-phase multiferroic systems.…”