Bismuth iron garnet Bi3Fe5O12: a room temperature magnetoelectric material

Abstract

The possibility to control the magnetic properties of a material with an electric field at room temperature is highly desirable for modern applications. Moreover, a coupling between magnetic and electric orders within a single material presenting a wide range of exceptional physical properties, such as bismuth iron garnet (BIG), may lead to great advances in the field of spintronic applications. In particular, the combination of the magnetoelectric (ME) coupling with the low damping of spin waves in BIG can allow the control and manipulation of spin waves by an electric field in magnonic devices. Here we report the unambiguous observation of linear magnetoelectric coupling above 300 K in BIG using ferromagnetic resonance technique with electric field modulation. The measured coupling value is comparable with that observed for prototypal magnetoelectric Cr2O3. On the basis of our experimental results, the strength of this linear ME coupling is directly linked to the presence of bismuth ions inducing strong spin orbit coupling and to the appearance of local magnetic inhomogeneities related to the magnetic domain structure. The unprecedented combination of magnetic, optical and magnetoelectrical properties in BIG is expected to trigger significant interest for technological applications as well as for theoretical studies.

References in corpus (7)

• Electric field control of nonvolatile four-state magnetization at room temperature
• Electric-field coupling to spin waves in a centrosymmetric ferrite
• Magnetoelectric Control of Domain Walls in a Ferrite Garnet Film
• The symmetry and magnetoelectric effects in garnet crystals and films
• Magneto-Electric Coupling in Single Crystal Cu2OSeO3 Studied by a Novel Electron Spin Resonance Technique
• Transverse Magneto-Optical Kerr Effect in Active Magneto-Plasmonic Structures
• Excitation of magnetic precession in bismuth iron garnet via a polarization-independent impulsive photomagnetic effect

Cited by in corpus (2)

• TMOKE as efficient tool for the magneto-optic analysis of ultra-thin magnetic films
• Bismuth iron garnet: ab initio study of electronic properties