Electrical switching of magnetic polarity in a multiferroic BiFeO3 device at room temperature

Waterfield Price, Noah, Johnson, Roger D., Saenrang, Wittawatt, Bombardi, Alexendro, Chmiel, Francis P., Eom, Chang-Beom and Radaelli, Paolo G. (2017) Electrical switching of magnetic polarity in a multiferroic BiFeO3 device at room temperature. Physical Review Applied, 8 (1), [014033]. (doi:10.1103/PhysRevApplied.8.014033).

Abstract

We have directly imaged reversible electrical switching of the cycloidal rotation direction (magnetic polarity) in a (111)pc−BiFeO3 epitaxial-film device at room temperature by nonresonant x-ray magnetic scattering. Consistent with previous reports, fully relaxed (111)pc−BiFeO3 epitaxial films consisting of a single ferroelectric domain are found to comprise a submicron-scale mosaic of magnetoelastic domains, all sharing a common direction of the magnetic polarity, which is found to switch reversibly upon reversal of the ferroelectric polarization without any measurable change of the magnetoelastic domain population. A real-space polarimetry map of our device clearly distinguishes between regions of the sample electrically addressed into the two magnetic states with a resolution of a few tens of micron. Contrary to the general belief that the magneto-electric coupling in BiFeO3 is weak, we find that electrical switching has a dramatic effect on the magnetic structure, with the magnetic moments rotating on average by 90° at every cycle.

This record has no associated files available for download.

Contributors

Download statistics