Electric-field control of spin dynamics during magnetic phase transitions

Tianxiang Nan; Yeonbae Lee; Shihao Zhuang; Zhongqiang Hu; James D Clarkson; Xinjun Wang; Changhyun Ko; HwanSung Choe; Zuhuang Chen; David Budil; Junqiao Wu; Sayeef Salahuddin; Jiamian Hu; Ramamoorthy Ramesh; Nian Sun

doi:10.1126/sciadv.abd2613

Electric-field control of spin dynamics during magnetic phase transitions

Sci Adv. 2020 Oct 2;6(40):eabd2613. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.abd2613. Print 2020 Oct.

Authors

Tianxiang Nan^{1

2}, Yeonbae Lee^{3

4}, Shihao Zhuang⁵, Zhongqiang Hu², James D Clarkson³, Xinjun Wang², Changhyun Ko³, HwanSung Choe³, Zuhuang Chen³, David Budil⁶, Junqiao Wu^{3

4}, Sayeef Salahuddin⁷, Jiamian Hu⁵, Ramamoorthy Ramesh^{8

4

9}, Nian Sun¹⁰

Affiliations

¹ Institute of Microelectronics, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China. nantianxiang@mail.tsinghua.edu.cn rramesh@berkeley.edu n.sun@northeastern.edu.
² Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Northeastern University, Boston, MA 02115, USA.
³ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.
⁴ Materials Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.
⁵ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53706, USA.
⁶ Department of Chemistry, Northeastern University, Boston, MA 02115, USA.
⁷ Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.
⁸ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA. nantianxiang@mail.tsinghua.edu.cn rramesh@berkeley.edu n.sun@northeastern.edu.
⁹ Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.
¹⁰ Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Northeastern University, Boston, MA 02115, USA. nantianxiang@mail.tsinghua.edu.cn rramesh@berkeley.edu n.sun@northeastern.edu.

Abstract

Controlling magnetization dynamics is imperative for developing ultrafast spintronics and tunable microwave devices. However, the previous research has demonstrated limited electric-field modulation of the effective magnetic damping, a parameter that governs the magnetization dynamics. Here, we propose an approach to manipulate the damping by using the large damping enhancement induced by the two-magnon scattering and a nonlocal spin relaxation process in which spin currents are resonantly transported from antiferromagnetic domains to ferromagnetic matrix in a mixed-phased metallic alloy FeRh. This damping enhancement in FeRh is sensitive to its fraction of antiferromagnetic and ferromagnetic phases, which can be dynamically tuned by electric fields through a strain-mediated magnetoelectric coupling. In a heterostructure of FeRh and piezoelectric PMN-PT, we demonstrated a more than 120% modulation of the effective damping by electric fields during the antiferromagnetic-to-ferromagnetic phase transition. Our results demonstrate an efficient approach to controlling the magnetization dynamics, thus enabling low-power tunable electronics.

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