Ultralow Voltage Manipulation of Ferromagnetism

Bhagwati Prasad; Yen-Lin Huang; Rajesh V Chopdekar; Zuhuang Chen; James Steffes; Sujit Das; Qian Li; Mengmeng Yang; Chia-Ching Lin; Tanay Gosavi; Dmitri E Nikonov; Zi Qiang Qiu; Lane W Martin; Bryan D Huey; Ian Young; Jorge Íñiguez; Sasikanth Manipatruni; Ramamoorthy Ramesh

doi:10.1002/adma.202001943

Ultralow Voltage Manipulation of Ferromagnetism

Adv Mater. 2020 Jul;32(28):e2001943. doi: 10.1002/adma.202001943. Epub 2020 May 28.

Authors

Bhagwati Prasad¹, Yen-Lin Huang^{1

2}, Rajesh V Chopdekar³, Zuhuang Chen¹, James Steffes⁴, Sujit Das¹, Qian Li⁵, Mengmeng Yang⁵, Chia-Ching Lin⁶, Tanay Gosavi⁶, Dmitri E Nikonov⁶, Zi Qiang Qiu⁵, Lane W Martin^{1

2}, Bryan D Huey⁴, Ian Young⁶, Jorge Íñiguez^{7

8}, Sasikanth Manipatruni^{6

9}, Ramamoorthy Ramesh^{1

5}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA.
² Materials Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA.
³ Advanced Light Source, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA.
⁴ Institute of Materials Science, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, 06269, USA.
⁵ Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA.
⁶ Exploratory Integrated Circuits, Components Research, Intel Corp., Hillsboro, OR, 97124, USA.
⁷ Materials Research and Technology Department, Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST), Avenue des Hauts-Fourneaux 5, Esch-sur-Alzette, L-4362, Luxemburg.
⁸ Physics and Materials Science Research Unit, University of Luxembourg, 41 Rue du Brill, Belvaux, L-4422, Luxembourg.
⁹ Kepler Computing, Hillsboro, OR, 97124, USA.

PMID: 32468701
DOI: 10.1002/adma.202001943

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^-2 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 BiFeO₃ to scale the switching energy density to ≈10 µJ cm^-2 . This work provides a template to achieve attojoule-class nonvolatile memories.

Keywords: magnetoelectrics; multiferroics; nonvolatile memories; spintronics; ultralow-power spintronics.