Essential aspects of the spontaneous exchange bias effect

TL;DR

This review discusses the spontaneous exchange bias effect, highlighting its phenomenology, key advances, differences from conventional exchange bias, and future research directions in magnetic materials.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of the spontaneous exchange bias effect, emphasizing its unique features and recent progress in understanding this phenomenon.

Findings

Identifies critical features of spontaneous exchange bias

Highlights differences from conventional exchange bias

Discusses future challenges and research directions

Abstract

Here, we present a review of the phenomenology of the spontaneous exchange bias effect, a phenomenon in which some materials exhibit unidirectional magnetic anisotropy even without the assistance of an external magnetic field applied during its cooling process. We review and discuss the most critical advances in this field of research that flourished more than a decade ago, pointing out its main features as well as its similarities and dissimilarities with the conventional exchange bias effect that has been vastly investigated since the 1950 decade. Finally, we briefly overview the obstacles to advancement in the field and discuss what we believe could be promising roads to overcome them.