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Electric field control of deterministic current-induced magnetization switching in a hybrid ferromagnetic/ferroelectric structure

Nature Materials volume 16, pages 712–716 (2017)Cite this article

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Abstract

All-electrical and programmable manipulations of ferromagnetic bits are highly pursued for the aim of high integration and low energy consumption in modern information technology1,2,3. Methods based on the spin–orbit torque switching4,5,6 in heavy metal/ferromagnet structures have been proposed with magnetic field7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15, and are heading toward deterministic switching without external magnetic field16,17. Here we demonstrate that an in-plane effective magnetic field can be induced by an electric field without breaking the symmetry of the structure of the thin film, and realize the deterministic magnetization switching in a hybrid ferromagnetic/ferroelectric structure with Pt/Co/Ni/Co/Pt layers on PMN-PT substrate. The effective magnetic field can be reversed by changing the direction of the applied electric field on the PMN-PT substrate, which fully replaces the controllability function of the external magnetic field. The electric field is found to generate an additional spin–orbit torque on the CoNiCo magnets, which is confirmed by macrospin calculations and micromagnetic simulations.

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Figure 1: Schematic of device structures and current switching measurements of the devices.
Figure 2: Electrical controllable deterministic magnetization switching by current pulses without magnetic field.
Figure 3: The origin of the deterministic switching.
Figure 4: Spin current density distribution and the magnetization switching.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by NSFC Grant No. 61225021 and 11474272, ‘973 Program’ No. 2014CB643903. We also acknowledge the support from K. C. Wong Education Foundation.

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Author notes

  1. Kaiming Cai and Meiyin Yang: These authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. SKLSM, Institute of Semiconductors, CAS, PO Box 912, Beijing 100083, China

    Kaiming Cai, Meiyin Yang, Yang Ji, Yu Sheng, Bao Zhang, Nan Zhang, Houzhi Zheng & Kaiyou Wang

  2. Department of Physics, School of Sciences, Beijing Technology and Business University, Beijing 100048, China

    Hailang Ju, Baohe Li & Shuai Liu

  3. ICAC, Institute of Microelectronics of CAS, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100029, China

    Sumei Wang

  4. School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Nottingham, Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK

    Kevin William Edmonds

Authors
  1. Kaiming Cai
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Contributions

K.W. and M.Y. conceived and designed the experiments. H.J., S.L. and B.L. provided the thin magnetic films. K.C. and M.Y. fabricated and measured the devices. K.W., M.Y., K.C. and S.W. performed the theoretical analysis and modelling. B.Z., Y.S., and N.Z. assisted in measurement and processed the data. K.W.E., Y.J. and H.Z. discussed the results and commented on the manuscript. K.C., M.Y. and K.W. wrote the manuscript. All authors revised the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Kaiyou Wang.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Cai, K., Yang, M., Ju, H. et al. Electric field control of deterministic current-induced magnetization switching in a hybrid ferromagnetic/ferroelectric structure. Nature Mater 16, 712–716 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat4886

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