Electric-field control of skyrmions in multiferroic heterostructure via magnetoelectric coupling

You Ba; Shihao Zhuang; Yike Zhang; Yutong Wang; Yang Gao; Hengan Zhou; Mingfeng Chen; Weideng Sun; Quan Liu; Guozhi Chai; Jing Ma; Ying Zhang; Huanfang Tian; Haifeng Du; Wanjun Jiang; Cewen Nan; Jia-Mian Hu; Yonggang Zhao

doi:10.1038/s41467-020-20528-y

Electric-field control of skyrmions in multiferroic heterostructure via magnetoelectric coupling

Nat Commun. 2021 Jan 12;12(1):322. doi: 10.1038/s41467-020-20528-y.

Authors

You Ba^{1

2}, Shihao Zhuang³, Yike Zhang^{1

2}, Yutong Wang^{1

2}, Yang Gao⁴, Hengan Zhou^{1

2}, Mingfeng Chen⁵, Weideng Sun^{1

2}, Quan Liu^{1

2}, Guozhi Chai⁴, Jing Ma⁵, Ying Zhang⁶, Huanfang Tian⁶, Haifeng Du⁷, Wanjun Jiang^{1

2}, Cewen Nan⁵, Jia-Mian Hu⁸, Yonggang Zhao^{9

10}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Physics, State Key Laboratory of Low-Dimensional Quantum Physics, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China.
² Frontier Science Center for Quantum Information, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China.
³ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, 53706, USA.
⁴ Key Laboratory for Magnetism and Magnetic Materials of the Ministry of Education, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, 730000, China.
⁵ School of Materials Science and Engineering, State Key Laboratory of New Ceramics and Fine Processing, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China.
⁶ Beijing National Laboratory for Condensed Matter Physics, Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100190, China.
⁷ Anhui Province Key Laboratory of Condensed Matter Physics at Extreme Conditions, High Magnetic Field Laboratory of Chinese Academy of Sciences, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, 230031, China.
⁸ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, 53706, USA. jhu238@wisc.edu.
⁹ Department of Physics, State Key Laboratory of Low-Dimensional Quantum Physics, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China. ygzhao@tsinghua.edu.cn.
¹⁰ Frontier Science Center for Quantum Information, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China. ygzhao@tsinghua.edu.cn.

Abstract

Room-temperature skyrmions in magnetic multilayers are considered to be promising candidates for the next-generation spintronic devices. Several approaches have been developed to control skyrmions, but they either cause significant heat dissipation or require ultrahigh electric fields near the breakdown threshold. Here, we demonstrate electric-field control of skyrmions through strain-mediated magnetoelectric coupling in ferromagnetic/ferroelectric multiferroic heterostructures. We show the process of non-volatile creation of multiple skyrmions, reversible deformation and annihilation of a single skyrmion by performing magnetic force microscopy with in situ electric fields. Strain-induced changes in perpendicular magnetic anisotropy and interfacial Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction strength are characterized experimentally. These experimental results, together with micromagnetic simulations, demonstrate that strain-mediated magnetoelectric coupling (via strain-induced changes in both the perpendicular magnetic anisotropy and interfacial Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction is responsible for the observed electric-field control of skyrmions. Our work provides a platform to investigate electric-field control of skyrmions in multiferroic heterostructures and paves the way towards more energy-efficient skyrmion-based spintronics.