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Reversible electric control of exchange bias in a multiferroic field-effect device

Nature Materials volume 9, pages 756–761 (2010)Cite this article

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Abstract

Electric-field control of magnetization has many potential applications in magnetic memory storage, sensors and spintronics. One approach to obtain this control is through multiferroic materials. Instead of using direct coupling between ferroelectric and ferromagnetic order parameters in a single-phase multiferroic material, which only shows a weak magnetoelectric effect, a unique method using indirect coupling through an intermediate antiferromagnetic order parameter can be used. In this article, we demonstrate electrical control of exchange bias using a field-effect device employing multiferroic (ferroelectric/antiferromagnetic) BiFeO3 as the dielectric and ferromagnetic La0.7Sr0.3MnO3 as the conducting channel; we can reversibly switch between two distinct exchange-bias states by switching the ferroelectric polarization of BiFeO3. This is an important step towards controlling magnetization with electric fields, which may enable a new class of electrically controllable spintronic devices and provide a new basis for producing electrically controllable spin-polarized currents.

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Figure 1: The interplay between heterointerfacial degrees of freedom.
Figure 2: A schematic of magnetization inversion through exchange-bias modulation and magnetometry measurements.
Figure 3: A schematic of the BFO/LSMO field-effect device.
Figure 4: Transport measurements of the field-effect device.
Figure 5: Electric-field control of exchange bias.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the US Department of Energy under contract no. DE-AC02-05CH11231. Fabrication and measurement equipment were supported by AFOSR grant No FA9550-08-1-0305. P.Y. is funded by a grant from a Western Institute of Nanoelectronics fellowship. The authors also thank J. S. Lee, D. A. Arena and C. C. Kao for X-ray magnetic circular dichroism measurements, L. W. Martin for discussions, Glenair Inc. for providing us with Nano Miniature connectors used in our experiment at 5 K, Y. P. Chen for circuit board layout and J. Clarke for use of his laboratory.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Materials Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California 94720, USA

    S. M. Wu, Shane A. Cybart, P. Yu, M. D. Rossell, J. X. Zhang, R. Ramesh & R. C. Dynes

  2. Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, USA

    S. M. Wu, Shane A. Cybart, P. Yu, R. Ramesh & R. C. Dynes

  3. Department of Physics, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California 92093, USA

    R. C. Dynes

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  1. S. M. Wu
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  2. Shane A. Cybart
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Contributions

This work was a collaborative effort between the R.C.D. and R.R. groups. In the R.C.D. group, S.M.W. and S.A.C. designed the device and determined the processing steps. Device fabrication was carried out by S.M.W. The experimental measurement set-up was built and designed by S.A.C., and both S.M.W. and S.A.C. carried out the measurements. In the R.R. group, P.Y. grew all of the films and made SQUID magnetometer measurements. J.X.Z. carried out the PFM work and M.D.R. carried out the TEM study, both shown in the Supplementary Information.

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Correspondence to S. M. Wu.

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Wu, S., Cybart, S., Yu, P. et al. Reversible electric control of exchange bias in a multiferroic field-effect device. Nature Mater 9, 756–761 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat2803

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