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Electric-field control of spin waves at room temperature in multiferroic BiFeO3

Nature Materials volume 9, pages 975–979 (2010)Cite this article

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Abstract

To face the challenges lying beyond present technologies based on complementary metal–oxide–semiconductors, new paradigms for information processing are required. Magnonics1 proposes to use spin waves to carry and process information, in analogy with photonics that relies on light waves, with several advantageous features such as potential operation in the terahertz range and excellent coupling to spintronics2. Several magnonic analog and digital logic devices3 have been proposed, and some demonstrated4. Just as for spintronics, a key issue for magnonics is the large power required to control/write information (conventionally achieved through magnetic fields applied by strip lines, or by spin transfer from large spin-polarized currents). Here we show that in BiFeO3, a room-temperature magnetoelectric material5, the spin-wave frequency (>600 GHz) can be tuned electrically by over 30%, in a non-volatile way and with virtually no power dissipation. Theoretical calculations indicate that this effect originates from a linear magnetoelectric effect related to spin–orbit coupling induced by the applied electric field. We argue that these properties make BiFeO3 a promising medium for spin-wave generation, conversion and control in future magnonics architectures.

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Figure 1: Electrical control of spin waves.
Figure 2: Spin-wave hysteresis loop.
Figure 3: Electric-field dependence of the measured and calculated spin-wave frequencies.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank R. Lobo and P. Monod for fruitful discussions and E. Jacquet for technical assistance. D.C., M.B. and A.B. would like to acknowledge support from the French Agence Nationale pour la Recherche, contract MELOIC (ANR-08-P196-36). R.d.S. would like to acknowledge support from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratoire Matériaux et Phénomènes Quantiques (UMR 7162 CNRS), Université Paris Diderot-Paris 7, 75205 Paris cedex 13, France

    P. Rovillain, Y. Gallais, A. Sacuto, M. A. Méasson & M. Cazayous

  2. Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia, V8W 3P6, Canada

    R. de Sousa

  3. Service de Physique de l’Etat Condensé, CEA Saclay, IRAMIS, SPEC (CNRS URA 2464), F-91191 Gif sur Yvette, France

    D. Colson & A. Forget

  4. Unité Mixte de Physique CNRS/Thales, 1 av. A. Fresnel, Campus de l’Ecole Polytechnique, F-91767 Palaiseau, France

    M. Bibes & A. Barthélémy

  5. Université Paris-Sud, 91405 Orsay, France

    M. Bibes & A. Barthélémy

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  1. P. Rovillain
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Contributions

The samples were grown by A.F. and D.C.; P.R., M.C., M.B. and A.B. designed the experiment; P.R. and M.C. carried out experiments and analysed data; R.d.S. developed the model and analysed data. All authors discussed the results and wrote the manuscript.

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Correspondence to M. Cazayous.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Rovillain, P., de Sousa, R., Gallais, Y. et al. Electric-field control of spin waves at room temperature in multiferroic BiFeO3. Nature Mater 9, 975–979 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat2899

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