Scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences have made new progress in the field of electronically controlled magnetism of multiferroic heterojunctions.

Team of Scientists of the Chinese Academy of Sciences-- Scientists from the Nano-control and Biomechanics Laboratory of the Institute of Medical Technology of Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology have made new progress in the field of multi-iron heterojunction electronically controlled magnetism. This research provides a low-energy, non-destructive electro-write magnetic reading storage method. New way. Relevant results were published in ACS Nano, a nanomaterials magazine, under the title of Deterministic, Reversible, and Nonvolatile Low-Voltage Writing of Magnetic Domains in Epitaxial BaTiO3/Fe3O4Heterostructure ("Stable, Reversible and Non-lost Magnetic Domain Reversal in BaTiO3/Fe3O4 Heterojunction by Low Voltage"). The first author of the paper is Dr. Zhong Gao Kuo of Shenzhen Advanced Institute.

The electronically controlled magnetic coupling effect based on multiferroic materials has rich physical connotation and great application prospect for the realization of magnetic non-volatile regulation, and has been a hot research topic in the field of physics and materials science in the past two decades. At present, the electrically controlled magnetic coupling is often induced indirectly by interfacial strain, and the inversion symmetry of the strain makes it difficult for the electric field to change the magnetization orientation, and vice versa. At the same time, in recent years, a large number of studies have used the movement of ions in the material to control the composition and structure of the material, which provides a new idea for the use of electric field to control the magnetization orientation in the multi-iron material.

The team used the pulsed laser deposition system (PLD) successfully prepared BaTiO3Fe3O4 multi-iron epitaxial heterojunction. The polarization reversal of BaTiO3 is realized by applying voltage, and then the movement of oxygen vacancy in Fe3O4 is controlled, so as to realize the reversible and non-volatile regulation of the magnetic moment direction in Fe3O4. In addition, the study takes advantage of the oxygen vacancies inherent in magnetic oxides and does not require ionic liquid gates, which is conducive to the wide application of oxide multi-iron heterostructures and greatly simplifies the application of devices. This method provides a new idea for the use of ion motion to control the electrical magnetic properties of multi-iron materials, and has broad application prospects.

The above work has been funded by the National Key Research and Development Program of Nanotechnology, the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the Shenzhen Science and Technology Innovation Commission.