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Self-biased magnetoelectric switching at room temperature in three-phase ferroelectric–antiferromagnetic–ferrimagnetic nanocomposites

Nature Electronics volume 4, pages 333–341 (2021)Cite this article

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An Author Correction to this article was published on 09 June 2021

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Abstract

Magnetoelectric systems could be used to develop magnetoelectric random access memory and microsensor devices. One promising system is the two-phase 3-1-type multiferroic nanocomposite in which a one-dimensional magnetic column is embedded in a three-dimensional ferroelectric matrix. However, it suffers from a number of limitations including unwanted leakage currents and the need for biasing with a magnetic field. Here we show that the addition of an antiferromagnet to a 3-1-type multiferroic nanocomposite can lead to a large, self-biased magnetoelectric effect at room temperature. Our three-phase system is composed of a ferroelectric Na0.5Bi0.5TiO3 matrix in which ferrimagnetic NiFe2O4 nanocolumns coated with antiferromagnetic p-type NiO are embedded. This system, which is self-assembled, exhibits a magnetoelectric coefficient of up to 1.38 × 10–9 s m–1, which is large enough to switch the magnetic anisotropy from the easy axis (Keff = 0.91 × 104 J m–3) to the easy plane (Keff = –1.65 × 104 J m–3).

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Fig. 1: Schematic of a comparison between three-phase and two-phase nanocomposites.
Fig. 2: Characterizations of leakage.
Fig. 3: STEM characterizations.
Fig. 4: Magnetic hysteresis loops measured with in situ electric voltage.
Fig. 5: Dependence of EB effect on the applied voltage.
Fig. 6: Voltage-induced strain and its impact on magnetic anisotropy energy of NiO.

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Data availability

The data that support the plots within this paper and other findings of this study are available from the corresponding authors upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge funding from the Leverhulme Trust grant no. RPG-2015-017, EPSRC grant nos. EP/N004272/1 and EP/M000524/1, the Royal Academy of Engineering Chair in Emerging Technologies grant no. CiET1819\24, EU grant no. H2020-MSCA-IF-2016 (745886)-MuStMAM and the Isaac Newton Trust (grant no. RG96474). This work was supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (grant no. 2017YFA0206303) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant nos. 11975035 and 51731001). The US–UK collaborative effort was funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation grant nos. ECCS-1902644 (Purdue University) and ECCS-1902623 (University at Buffalo, SUNY), U.S. Office of Naval Research grant no. N00014-20-1-2043 (Purdue University) and the EPRSC grant no. EP/T012218/1 (University of Cambridge). RBS measurements were performed at the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies (CINT), an Office of Science User Facility operated for the US Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science. Los Alamos National Laboratory, an affirmative action equal opportunity employer, is managed by Triad National Security, LLC for the US Department of Energy’s NNSA, under contract 89233218CNA000001.

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Author notes

  1. Rui Wu

    Present address: Beijing Academy of Quantum Information Sciences, Beijing, People’s Republic of China

  2. Tuhin Maity

    Present address: School of Physics, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Thiruvananthapuram, Thiruvananthapuram, India

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Materials Science & Metallurgy, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

    Rui Wu, Tuhin Maity, Ahmed Kursumovic, Weiwei Li, Chao Yun & Judith L. MacManus-Driscoll

  2. Materials Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA

    Di Zhang, Xingyao Gao & Haiyan Wang

  3. Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, NM, USA

    Ping Lu

  4. State Key Laboratory for Artificial Microstructure and Mesoscopic Physics, School of Physics, Peking University, Beijing, People’s Republic of China

    Jie Yang, Guang Tian & Jinbo Yang

  5. Electronic Materials Research Laboratory, Key Laboratory of the Ministry of Education & International Center for Dielectric Research, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, People’s Republic of China

    Shishun Zhao, Ziyao Zhou & Ming Liu

  6. Department of Physics, University at Buffalo—the State University of New York, Buffalo, NY, USA

    Xiucheng Wei & Hao Zeng

  7. Materials Science and Technology Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM, USA

    Yongqiang Wang

  8. School of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing, People’s Republic of China

    Zengyao Ren

  9. State Key Laboratory of Physical Chemistry of Solid Surfaces, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Xiamen University, Xiamen, People’s Republic of China

    Kelvin H. L. Zhang

  10. Department of Materials Design and Innovation, University at Buffalo—the State University of New York, Buffalo, NY, USA

    Quanxi Jia

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Contributions

R.W. and J.L.M.-D. conceived the experiments and supervised the research. R.W. made the samples and carried out the XRD and AFM characterizations and magnetic properties measurement. D.Z., P.L., X.G. and H.W. performed STEM imaging and EDX mapping. Jie Yang, R.W., G.T., Z.R. and Jinbo Yang contributed to the DFT calculation. S.Z., Z.Z. and M.L. contributed to the FMR measurement. X.W., H.Z. and Q.J. contributed to the Hall effect measurement. A.K. contributed to the PFM and c-AFM measurements. Y.W. and W.L. contributed to the RBS characterization. R.W., C.Y. and K.H.L.Z. contributed to the electric measurement and analysis. R.W., T.M. and J.L.M.-D. contributed to the data analysis and wrote the manuscript. All the authors contributed to reviewing and revising the manuscript.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Rui Wu, Tuhin Maity or Judith L. MacManus-Driscoll.

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Wu, R., Zhang, D., Maity, T. et al. Self-biased magnetoelectric switching at room temperature in three-phase ferroelectric–antiferromagnetic–ferrimagnetic nanocomposites. Nat Electron 4, 333–341 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41928-021-00584-y

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