Concept of artificial magnetoelectric materials via geometrically controlling curvilinear helimagnets


Concept of artificial magnetoelectric materials via geometrically controlling curvilinear helimagnets

Volkov, O.; Rößler, U.; Faßbender, J.; Makarov, D.

Magnetoelectric materials are of the great interest due to their unique coupling of the magnetic and electrical order parameters. In these materials magnetic states can be manipulated via electric field and vice versa, offering exciting prospectives for energy efficient memory, logic and sensor devices. However, a sizeable magnetoelectric coupling for technologically relevant applications is obtained for a limited set of single-phase bulk materials. Typically, this restriction can be removed by using two-phase materials, containing strain-coupled magnetoelectric heterostructures based on piezoelectric-magnetostrictive bilayers. Although the concept is promising, there is a clear limitation regarding the fact that strain-induced changes result in the modification of all intrinsic magnetic parameters, in particular anisotropic couplings. Ideally, it would be advantageous that electric field control of magnetic state is achieved without change of global intrinsic magnetic parameters.

We propose a novel type of artificial magnetoelectric material [1], which allows an electric field-induced deterministic switching between magnetic states without influencing intrinsic magnetic parameters. The proposal refers to geometrically curved helimagnets [2,3] embedded in a piezoelectric matrix or sandwiched between two piezoelectric layers. In contrast to typical strain-coupled magnetoelectric heterostructures, we exploit the geometric coupling between the piezoelectric matrix and curvilinear helimagents. Namely, a small geometrical deformation causes a drastic modification of magnetic state of the helimagnet through a magnetic phase transition between a homogeneous magnetic state and a periodical one. Resulting transformations of the average magnetization from non-zero to zero value can be uniquely assigned to logical “1” and “0”. This paves the way towards the realization of novel magnetoelectric devices with geometrically tunable and deterministically switchable magnetic states.

We provide not only the general concept but also show analytical validation for a prototypical example of torsional nanospring helimagnets. Furthermore, we put forth a discussion on the feasibility of the experimental realization of the concept including the choice of materials and fabrication approaches.

[1] O. M. Volkov et al., J. Phys. D: Appl. Phys. (2019). doi:10.1088/1361-6463/ab2368.
[2] O. M. Volkov et al., Scientific Reports 8, 866 (2018).
[3] R. Streubel et al., J. Phys. D: Appl. Phys. (Topical Review) 49, 363001 (2016).

Keywords: Micromagnetism; curvilinear effects; magnetoelectric materials

  • Lecture (Conference)
    2019 MRS Fall meeting & Exhibit, 01.-06.12.2019, Boston, USA

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Publ.-Id: 30396