Manipulating chiral spin transport with ferroelectric polarization

Xiaoxi Huang; Xianzhe Chen; Yuhang Li; John Mangeri; Hongrui Zhang; Maya Ramesh; Hossein Taghinejad; Peter Meisenheimer; Lucas Caretta; Sandhya Susarla; Rakshit Jain; Christoph Klewe; Tianye Wang; Rui Chen; Cheng-Hsiang Hsu; Isaac Harris; Sajid Husain; Hao Pan; Jia Yin; Padraic Shafer; Ziqiang Qiu; Davi R Rodrigues; Olle Heinonen; Dilip Vasudevan; Jorge Íñiguez; Darrell G Schlom; Sayeef Salahuddin; Lane W Martin; James G Analytis; Daniel C Ralph; Ran Cheng; Zhi Yao; Ramamoorthy Ramesh

doi:10.1038/s41563-024-01854-8

Manipulating chiral spin transport with ferroelectric polarization

Nat Mater. 2024 Apr 15. doi: 10.1038/s41563-024-01854-8. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Xiaoxi Huang^#¹, Xianzhe Chen^#^{2

3}, Yuhang Li^#⁴, John Mangeri^#⁵, Hongrui Zhang¹, Maya Ramesh⁶, Hossein Taghinejad⁷, Peter Meisenheimer¹, Lucas Caretta¹, Sandhya Susarla^{8

9}, Rakshit Jain^{10

11}, Christoph Klewe¹², Tianye Wang⁷, Rui Chen¹, Cheng-Hsiang Hsu^{8

13}, Isaac Harris⁷, Sajid Husain^{1

8}, Hao Pan¹, Jia Yin¹⁴, Padraic Shafer¹², Ziqiang Qiu⁷, Davi R Rodrigues¹⁵, Olle Heinonen¹⁶, Dilip Vasudevan¹⁴, Jorge Íñiguez^{5

17}, Darrell G Schlom⁶, Sayeef Salahuddin^{8

13}, Lane W Martin^{1

8}, James G Analytis^{7

18}, Daniel C Ralph^{10

11}, Ran Cheng^{4

19}, Zhi Yao¹⁴, Ramamoorthy Ramesh^{20

21

22}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA.
² Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA. xzchen@berkeley.edu.
³ Materials Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA. xzchen@berkeley.edu.
⁴ Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of California, Riverside, CA, USA.
⁵ Materials Research and Technology Department, Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology, Esch/Alzette, Luxembourg.
⁶ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA.
⁷ Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA.
⁸ Materials Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA.
⁹ School for Engineering of Matter, Transport and Energy, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA.
¹⁰ Department of Physics, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA.
¹¹ Kavli Institute at Cornell for Nanoscale Science, Ithaca, NY, USA.
¹² Advanced Light Source, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA.
¹³ Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA.
¹⁴ Applied Mathematics and Computational Research Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA.
¹⁵ Department of Electrical Engineering, Politecnico di Bari, Bari, Italy.
¹⁶ Materials Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory, Lemont, IL, USA.
¹⁷ Department of Physics and Materials Science, University of Luxembourg, Belvaux, Luxembourg.
¹⁸ CIFAR Quantum Materials, CIFAR, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
¹⁹ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California, Riverside, CA, USA.
²⁰ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA. rramesh@berkeley.edu.
²¹ Materials Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA. rramesh@berkeley.edu.
²² Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA. rramesh@berkeley.edu.

^# Contributed equally.

PMID: 38622325
DOI: 10.1038/s41563-024-01854-8

Abstract

A magnon is a collective excitation of the spin structure in a magnetic insulator and can transmit spin angular momentum with negligible dissipation. This quantum of a spin wave has always been manipulated through magnetic dipoles (that is, by breaking time-reversal symmetry). Here we report the experimental observation of chiral spin transport in multiferroic BiFeO₃ and its control by reversing the ferroelectric polarization (that is, by breaking spatial inversion symmetry). The ferroelectrically controlled magnons show up to 18% modulation at room temperature. The spin torque that the magnons in BiFeO₃ carry can be used to efficiently switch the magnetization of adjacent magnets, with a spin-torque efficiency comparable to the spin Hall effect in heavy metals. Utilizing such controllable magnon generation and transmission in BiFeO₃, an all-oxide, energy-scalable logic is demonstrated composed of spin-orbit injection, detection and magnetoelectric control. Our observations open a new chapter of multiferroic magnons and pave another path towards low-dissipation nanoelectronics.

Abstract

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