Demonstration of a strain-mediated magnetoelectric write and read unit in a Co60Fe20B20/ Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)0.7Ti0.3O3 heterostructure

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a room-temperature, strain-mediated magnetoelectric write and read system in a heterostructure, enabling magnetic state control and detection without magnetic fields, with results aligning with a theoretical model.

Contribution

It introduces a novel magnetoelectric heterostructure that enables simultaneous write and read operations via strain effects without symmetry breaking magnetic fields.

Findings

Magnetic easy axis can be rotated by applying voltage.

Magnetization changes induce measurable piezoelectric potentials.

Experimental results agree with a theoretical equivalent circuit model.

Abstract

Taking advantage of the Magnetoelectric (ME) and its inverse effect, this article demonstrates strain-mediated magnetoelectric write and read operations simultaneously in Co60Fe20B20/ Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)0.7Ti0.3O3 heterostructures without using any symmetry breaking magnetic field at room temperature. By applying an external DC-voltage across a (011)-cut PMN-PT substrate, the ferroelectric polarization is re-oriented, which results in an anisotropic in-plane strain that transfers to the CoFeB thin film and changes its magnetic anisotropy Hk. The change in Hk in-turn results in a 90o rotation of the magnetic easy axis for sufficiently high voltages. Simultaneously, the inverse effect is employed to read changes of the magnetic properties. Because the Piezoelectric (PE)/FerroMagnetic (FM) system is fully coupled, the change of magnetization in FM induces an elastic stress in the PE layer, which generates a piezoelectric potential in the system that can be used to readout the magnetic state of the FM layer. Our experimental results are in excellent qualitative agreement with a recently proposed, experimentally benchmarked equivalent circuit model that considers how magnetic properties are electrically controlled in such ME/PE heterostructure and how a back-voltage is generated due to changing magnetic properties in a self-consistent model.