Influence of elastically pinned magnetic domain walls on magnetization reversal in multiferroic heterostructures

Abstract

In elastically coupled multiferroic heterostructures that exhibit full domain correlations between ferroelectric and ferromagnetic sub-systems, magnetic domain walls are firmly pinned on top of ferroelectric domain boundaries. In this work we investigate the influence of pinned magnetic domain walls on the magnetization reversal process in a Co40Fe40B20 wedge film that is coupled to a ferroelectric BaTiO3 substrate via interface strain transfer. We show that the magnetic field direction can be used to select between two distinct magnetization reversal mechanisms, namely (1) double switching events involving alternate stripe domains at a time or (2) synchronized switching of all domains. Furthermore, scaling of the switching fields with domain width and film thickness is also found to depend on field orientation. These results are explained by considering the dissimilar energies of the two types of pinned magnetic domain walls that are formed in the system.

References in corpus (1)

• Magneto-ionic Control of Interfacial Magnetism

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Strain Coupled Domains in BaTiO3(111)-CoFeB Heterostructures
• Influence of magnetic field and ferromagnetic film thickness on domain pattern transfer in multiferroic heterostructures
• Static properties and current-induced dynamics of pinned $90$ degree magnetic domain walls under applied fields: an analytic approach
• Programmable control of spin-wave transmission in a domain-wall spin valve