Electrical Control of the Magnetic State of Fe

Author

Gerhard, Lukas ; Yamada, Toyo Kazu ; Balashov, Timofey ; Takács, Albert F. ; Wesselink, Rien J H ; Däne, Markus ; Fechner, Michael ; Ostanin, Sergey ; Ernst, Arthur ; Mertig, Ingrid ; Wulfhekel, Wulf

Author_Institution

Phys. Inst., Karlsruhe Inst. of Technol. (KIT), Karlsruhe, Germany

Volume

47

Issue

6

fYear

2011

fDate

6/1/2011 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

1619

Lastpage

1622

Abstract

Magneto-electric coupling offers a new pathway to information storage in magnetic memory devices. This phenomenon has been observed in various materials ranging from insulators to semiconductors. In bulk metallic systems, magneto-electric coupling has been disregarded as the electric field cannot enter bulk metals. In this work, we show that a substantial magneto-electric coupling exists in metallic Fe nano-islands grown on Cu(111). Using the electric field in the tunnel junction of a scanning tunneling microscope, the magnetic order parameter and the crystal structure of Fe was changed on the nanometer scale. This allows high density nonvolatile information storage by means of magneto-electric coupling in a simple metallic system.

Keywords

crystal structure; iron; island structure; magnetic structure; magnetic tunnelling; magnetoelectric effects; molecular beam epitaxial growth; monolayers; nanomagnetics; nanostructured materials; scanning tunnelling microscopy; Cu; Cu(lll) surface; Fe; crystal structure; electrical control; high density nonvolatile information storage; magnetic memory devices; magnetic order parameter; magnetic state; magneto-electric coupling; metallic Fe nanoislands; molecular beam epitaxy; monolayers; scanning tunneling microscopy; tunnel junction; Atomic layer deposition; Iron; Magnetic resonance imaging; Magnetic tunneling; Switches; Hard disks; magnetic memory; magnetoelectric effects; scanning probe microscopy;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Magnetics, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9464

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/TMAG.2011.2107506

Filename

5772204