Article abstract
Nature Materials 6, 296 - 302 (2007)
Published online: 11 March 2007 | doi:10.1038/nmat1860
Tunnel junctions with multiferroic barriers
Martin Gajek1,2, Manuel Bibes3, Stéphane Fusil1, Karim Bouzehouane1, Josep Fontcuberta2, Agnès Barthélémy1 & Albert Fert1
Abstract
Multiferroics are singular materials that can exhibit simultaneously electric and magnetic orders. Some are ferroelectric and ferromagnetic and provide the opportunity to encode information in electric polarization and magnetization to obtain four logic states. However, such materials are rare and schemes allowing a simple electrical readout of these states have not been demonstrated in the same device. Here, we show that films of La0.1Bi0.9MnO3 (LBMO) are ferromagnetic and ferroelectric, and retain both ferroic properties down to a thickness of 2 nm. We have integrated such ultrathin multiferroic films as barriers in spin-filter-type tunnel junctions that exploit the magnetic and ferroelectric degrees of freedom of LBMO. Whereas ferromagnetism permits read operations reminiscent of magnetic random access memories (MRAM), the electrical switching evokes a ferroelectric RAM write operation. Significantly, our device does not require the destructive ferroelectric readout, and therefore represents an advance over the original four-state memory concept based on multiferroics.
- Unité Mixte de Physique CNRS/Thales and Université Paris-Sud, Route départementale 128, 91767 Palaiseau, France
- Institut de Ciència de Materials de Barcelona, CSIC, Campus de la Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, 08193 Bellaterra, Spain
- Institut d'Electronique Fondamentale, CNRS, Université Paris-Sud, 91405 Orsay, France
Correspondence to: Manuel Bibes3 e-mail: manuel.bibes@ief.u-psud.fr
MORE ARTICLES LIKE THIS
These links to content published by NPG are automatically generated.
NEWS AND VIEWS
Data storage Multiferroic memoriesNature Materials News and Views (01 Apr 2007)
Multiferroics Towards a magnetoelectric memoryNature Materials News and Views (01 Jun 2008)
See all 7 matches for News And ViewsRESEARCH
Carrier-mediated magnetoelectricity in complex oxide heterostructuresNature Nanotechnology Article (01 Jan 2008)
Giant tunnel electroresistance for non-destructive readout of ferroelectric statesNature Letters to Editor (02 Jul 2009)
See all 40 matches for Research
