Ultralow Voltage Manipulation of Ferromagnetism.

Prasad, Bhagwati; Huang, Yen-Lin; Chopdekar, Rajesh V; Chen, Zuhuang; Steffes, James; Das, Sujit; Li, Qian; Yang, Mengmeng et al. · Adv Mater · 2020

basic_science · Level V

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Abstract

Spintronic elements based on spin transfer torque have emerged with potential for on-chip memory, but they suffer from large energy dissipation due to the large current densities required. In contrast, an electric-field-driven magneto-electric storage element can operate with capacitive displacement charge and potentially reach 1-10 µJ cm<sup>-2</sup> switching operation. Here, magneto-electric switching of a magnetoresistive element is shown, operating at or below 200 mV, with a pathway to get down to 100 mV. A combination of phase detuning is utilized via isovalent La substitution and thickness scaling in multiferroic BiFeO<sub>3</sub> to scale the switching energy density to ≈10 µJ cm<sup>-2</sup> . This work provides a template to achieve attojoule-class nonvolatile memories.