title: Full 180° magnetization reversal with electric fields.
abstract: Achieving 180° magnetization reversal with an electric field rather than a current or magnetic field is a fundamental challenge and represents a technological breakthrough towards new memory cell designs. Here we propose a mesoscale morphological engineering approach to accomplishing full 180° magnetization reversals with electric fields by utilizing both the in-plane piezostrains and magnetic shape anisotropy of a multiferroic heterostructure. Using phase-field simulations, we examined a patterned single-domain nanomagnet with four-fold magnetic axis on a ferroelectric layer with electric-field-induced uniaxial strains. We demonstrated that the uniaxial piezostrains, if non-collinear to the magnetic easy axis of the nanomagnet at certain angles, induce two successive, deterministic 90° magnetization rotations, thereby leading to full 180° magnetization reversals.
authors.affiliation: State Key Lab of New Ceramics and Fine Processing, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China.
authors.forename: J J
authors.initials: JJ
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: 1] State Key Lab of New Ceramics and Fine Processing, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China [2] Department of Materials Science and Engineering, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania 16802, USA.
authors.forename: J M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Hu
authors.affiliation: State Key Lab of New Ceramics and Fine Processing, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China.
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Ma
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China.
authors.forename: J X
authors.initials: JX
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: 1] State Key Lab of New Ceramics and Fine Processing, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China [2] Department of Materials Science and Engineering, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania 16802, USA.
authors.forename: L Q
authors.initials: LQ
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: State Key Lab of New Ceramics and Fine Processing, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China.
authors.forename: C W
authors.initials: CW
authors.lastname: Nan