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Voltage-driven annihilation and creation of magnetic vortices in Ni discs.

Accepted version
Peer-reviewed

Type

Article

Change log

Authors

Mansell, R 
Pellicelli, R 
Pesquera, D 
Nair, B 

Abstract

Using photoemission electron microscopy (PEEM) to image ferromagnetism in polycrystalline Ni disks, and ferroelectricity in their single-crystal BaTiO3 substrates, we find that voltage-driven 90° ferroelectric domain switching serves to reversibly annihilate each magnetic vortex via uniaxial compressive strain, and that the orientation of the resulting bi-domain reveals the chirality of the annihilated vortex. Micromagnetic simulations reveal that only 60% of this strain is required for annihilation. Voltage control of magnetic vortices is novel, and should be energetically favourable with respect to the use of a magnetic field or an electrical current. In future, stray field from bi-domains could be exploited to read vortex chirality. Given that core polarity can already be read via stray field, our work represents a step towards four-state low-power memory applications.

Description

Keywords

5108 Quantum Physics, 40 Engineering, 51 Physical Sciences

Journal Title

Nanoscale

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

2040-3364
2040-3372

Volume Title

12

Publisher

Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC)

Rights

All rights reserved
Sponsorship
The Royal Society, Gates Cambridge, the Winton Programme for the Physics of Sustainability, Trinity College, Agència de Gestió d’Ajuts Universitaris i de Recerca (AGAUR) from the Catalan government for Beatriu de Pinós postdoctoral fellowship (2014 BP-A 00079).