1. Electrical Control of the Magnetic State of Fe
- Author
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M. Däne, R. J. H. Wesselink, Michael Fechner, A. F. Takacs, Ingrid Mertig, Wulf Wulfhekel, Lukas Gerhard, Arthur Ernst, Timofey Balashov, Sergey Ostanin, Toyo Kazu Yamada, Faculty of Science and Technology, and Computational Materials Science
- Subjects
Materials science ,Condensed matter physics ,Magnetic structure ,business.industry ,Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials ,law.invention ,Coupling (electronics) ,Scanning probe microscopy ,Semiconductor ,METIS-303166 ,Tunnel junction ,law ,IR-104537 ,Electric field ,Electrical and Electronic Engineering ,Scanning tunneling microscope ,business ,Quantum tunnelling - Abstract
Magneto-electric coupling offers a new pathway to information storage in magnetic memory devices. This phenomenon has been observed in various materials ranging from insulators to semiconductors. In bulk metallic systems, magneto-electric coupling has been disregarded as the electric field cannot enter bulk metals. In this work, we show that a substantial magneto-electric coupling exists in metallic Fe nano-islands grown on Cu(111). Using the electric field in the tunnel junction of a scanning tunneling microscope, the magnetic order parameter and the crystal structure of Fe was changed on the nanometer scale. This allows high density nonvolatile information storage by means of magneto-electric coupling in a simple metallic system.
- Published
- 2011
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