Unveiling multiferroic proximity effect in graphene

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates how the electronic and magnetic properties of graphene can be controlled through proximity to a multiferroic substrate, specifically bismuth ferrite, enabling new device concepts based on multiferroic effects.

Contribution

It reveals the influence of multiferroic proximity on graphene's electronic structure and proposes a novel six-resistance device leveraging this effect.

Findings

Graphene's electronic structure is strongly affected by BFO's magnetic and electric polarization.

Proposed a six-resistance device exploiting multiferroic proximity effects.

Identified significant proximity electro-, magneto-, and multiferroic resistance effects.

Abstract

We demonstrate that electronic and magnetic properties of graphene can be tuned via proximity of multiferroic substrate. Our first-principles calculations performed both with and without spin-orbit coupling clearly show that by contacting graphene with bismuth ferrite BiFeO$_3$ (BFO) film, the spin-dependent electronic structure of graphene is strongly impacted both by the magnetic order and by electric polarization in the underlying BFO. Based on extracted Hamiltonian parameters obtained from the graphene band structure, we propose a concept of six-resistance device based on exploring multiferroic proximity effect giving rise to significant proximity electro- (PER), magneto- (PMR), and multiferroic (PMER) resistance effects. This finding paves a way towards multiferroic control of magnetic properties in two dimensional materials.