A large magnetic modulation, accompanied by stable bipolar resistive switching (RS) behavior, was observed in a Mn:ZnO film by applying a reversible electric field. A significant enhancement of the ferromagnetism of the film, to about five times larger than that in the initial (as-grown) state (IS), was obtained by switching the film into the low resistance state. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy demonstrated the existence of abundant oxygen vacancies in the IS of the film. We suggest that this electric field-induced magnetic switching effect originates with the migration and redistribution of oxygen vacancies during RS. Our work indicates that electric switching is an effective and simple method to increase the ferromagnetism of diluted magnetic oxide films. This provides a promising direction for research in spintronic devices.

Simultaneous manipulation of the magnetic and electric properties of a material by an electric field has been a recent focus of particular interest. In this work, we report such behavior in an Ag/Ti/Fe 3 O 4 /Pt device, where the Fe 3 O 4 film with a (111) preferred orientation is selected as the magnetic functional layer. We have shown that the Ag/Ti/Fe 3 O 4 /Pt device studied here displayed reversible and stable bipolar resistive switching (RS) behavior accompanied by a significant change in the magnetization during set and reset operations. Further analysis indicated that a redox reaction between Fe 3 O 4 and g-Fe 2 O 3 occurs near the Pt bottom electrode (BE) which may play an important role in this phenomenon. This finding makes Fe 3 O 4 a promising candidate for multi-dimensional memory devices.