Department of Physics and Astronomy: Publications and Other Research

 

Evgeny Tsymbal Publications

ORCID IDs

Tsymbal http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6728-5571

Document Type

Article

Date of this Version

8-21-2019

Citation

Physical Review Applied (2019) 12: 024044

doi: 10.1103/PhysRevApplied.12.024044

Comments

Copyright © 2019, American Physical Society. Used by permission

Abstract

Driven by the technological importance of the recently discovered ferroelectric HfO2, we explore a magnetoelectric effect at the HfO2-based ferroelectric-ferromagnetic interface. Using density-functionaltheory calculations of the Ni/HfO2/Ni (001) heterostructure as a model system, we predict a stable and sizable ferroelectric polarization in a few-nm-thick HfO2 layer. For the Ni/HfO2 interface with opposite polarization directions (pointing to or away from the interface), we find a sizable difference in the interfacial Ni—O bonding, resulting in dissimilar degrees of depletion of the electron density around the interface. The latter affects the relative population of the exchange-split majority and minority spin bands at the interface and thus the interfacial magnetic moments. The sizable change in the interface magnetization with ferroelectric polarization reversal of HfO2 manifests a significant ferroelectrically induced magnetoelectric effect at the Ni/HfO2 interface. Our results reveal promising prospects of ferroelectric-ferromagnetic composite multiferroics based on HfO2-based ferroelectric materials.

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