Electric-field control of spin waves at room temperature in multiferroic BiFeO3

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that in BiFeO3, a room-temperature multiferroic, spin wave frequencies can be electrically tuned by over 30% with minimal power, enabling energy-efficient magnonic devices.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method to control spin waves electrically in BiFeO3 at room temperature, leveraging its magnetoelectric properties for magnonic applications.

Findings

Spin wave frequency >600 GHz can be tuned electrically by over 30%.

The tuning is non-volatile and requires virtually no power.

The effect is due to a linear magnetoelectric interaction related to spin-orbit coupling.

Abstract

To face the challenges lying beyond current CMOS-based technology, new paradigms for information processing are required. Magnonics proposes to use spin waves to carry and process information, in analogy with photonics that relies on light waves, with several advantageous features such as potential operation in the THz range and excellent coupling to spintronics. Several magnonic analog and digital logic devices have been proposed, and some demonstrated. Just as for spintronics, a key issue for magnonics is the large power required to control/write information (conventionally achieved through magnetic fields applied by strip lines, or by spin transfer from large spin-polarized currents). Here we show that in BiFeO3, a room-temperature magnetoelectric material, the spin wave frequency (>600 GHz) can be tuned electrically by over 30%, in a non-volatile way and with virtually no power dissipation. Theoretical calculations indicate that this effect originates from a linear magnetoelectric effect related to spin-orbit coupling induced by the applied electric field. We argue that these properties make BiFeO3 a promising medium for spin wave generation, conversion and control in future magnonics architectures.