Artificial Control of Giant Converse Magnetoelectric Effect in Spintronic Multiferroic Heterostructure

To develop voltage-controlled magnetization switching technologies for spintronics applications, a highly (422)-oriented Co₂FeSi layer on top of the piezoelectric PMN-PT(011) is experimentally demonstrated by inserting a vanadium (V) ultra-thin layer. The strength of the growth-induced magnetic anisotropy of the (422)-oriented Co₂FeSi layers can be artificially controlled by tuning the thicknesses of the inserted V and the grown Co₂FeSi layers. As a result, a giant converse magnetoelectric effect (over 10^-5 s m^-1) and a non-volatile binary state at zero electric field are simultaneously achieved in the (422)-oriented Co₂FeSi/V/PMN-PT(011) multiferroic heterostructure. This study leads to a way toward magnetoresistive random-access-memory (MRAM) with a low power writing technology.