Full Electric Control of Exchange Bias at Room Temperature by Resistive Switching

Lujun Wei; Zhenzhong Hu; Guanxiang Du; Yuan Yuan; Ji Wang; Hongqing Tu; Biao You; Shiming Zhou; Jiangtao Qu; Hongwei Liu; Rongkun Zheng; Yong Hu; Jun Du

doi:10.1002/adma.201801885

Full Electric Control of Exchange Bias at Room Temperature by Resistive Switching

Adv Mater. 2018 Jul;30(30):e1801885. doi: 10.1002/adma.201801885. Epub 2018 Jun 11.

Authors

Lujun Wei¹, Zhenzhong Hu², Guanxiang Du², Yuan Yuan¹, Ji Wang¹, Hongqing Tu¹, Biao You^{1

3}, Shiming Zhou⁴, Jiangtao Qu⁵, Hongwei Liu⁶, Rongkun Zheng⁵, Yong Hu⁷, Jun Du^{1

3}

Affiliations

¹ National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures and Department of Physics, Nanjing University, Nanjing, 210093, P. R. China.
² College of Telecommunication and Information Engineering, Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Nanjing, 210003, P. R. China.
³ Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructures, Nanjing, 210093, P. R. China.
⁴ Department of Physics, Tongji University, Shanghai, 200092, P. R. China.
⁵ School of Physics and the Australian Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology, The University of Sydney, NSW, 2006, Australia.
⁶ The Australian Centre for Microscopy and Microanalysis, The University of Sydney, NSW, 2006, Australia.
⁷ College of Sciences, Northeastern University, Shenyang, 110819, P. R. China.

PMID: 29892982
DOI: 10.1002/adma.201801885

Abstract

Electric control of exchange bias (EB) is of vital importance in energy-efficient spintronics. Although many attempts have been made during the past decade, each has its own limitations for operation and thus falls short of full direct and reversible electrical control of EB at room temperature. Here, a novel approach is proposed by virtue of unipolar resistive switching to accomplish this task in a Si/SiO₂ /Pt/Co/NiO/Pt device. By applying certain voltages, the device displays obvious EB in the high-resistance-state while negligible EB in the low-resistance state. Conductive filaments forming in the NiO layer and rupturing near the Co-NiO interface are considered to play dominant roles in determining the combined resistive switching and EB phenomena. This work paves a new way for designing multifunctional and nonvolatile magnetoelectric random access memory devices.

Keywords: conductive filaments; electric control; exchange bias; resistive switching.