Imaging and Control of Surface Magnetization Domains in a Magnetoelectric Antiferromagnet

Interplay of chemical structure and magnetic order coupling at the interface between Cr2O3 and Fe3O4 in hybrid nanocomposites

“…This boundary polarization, roughness insensitive, has been demonstrated to contribute to the magnetization. 27,28 Accordingly, the hysteresis loops included in Fig. 4 can be associated with these two main contributions; one responsible for the large magnetization values due to the ferrimagnetic (FiM) magnetite nanoparticles, which superimposes the antiferromagnetic contribution responsible for the subtle slope and almost non-saturation of the magnetization at high field values that corresponds to the chromium oxide magnetic phase identified.…”

Dispersion of Electric-Field-Induced Faraday Effect in MagnetoelectricCr2O3

“…ME devices encode information in remnant and, thus, nonvolatile magnetization states providing additional functionality over CMOS counterparts. In ME devices, voltage-controlled nonlinear switching of boundary magnetization, a generic property of ME antiferromagnets [14][15][16], is mapped onto voltage-controlled switching between remnant magnetization of an adjacent ferromagnetic (FM) thin film through quantum-mechanical exchange at the AFM/FM interface. It gives rise to voltagecontrolled exchange bias [15,17,18] enabling, e.g., ultralow-power ME magnetic random-access memory, majority gates, and other ME variations of memory and logic device applications [4,5].…”

Microscopic origin of the structural phase transitions at the Cr2O3(0001) surface

“…Here we include the data on the atomic relaxations at the Cr 2 O 3 (0001) surface and provide a justification for model (3) and (4). Table IV 6,12,16 Although there are notable deviations from the LEED data, 6 we need to remember that the latter correspond to the actual surface termination but were fitted assuming the A (1 × 1) model.…”

“…On the other hand, the equilibrium magnetization of the Cr 2 O 3 (0001) surface enables interesting spintronic applications. [1][2][3][4] For these reasons it is interesting to consider the magnetic properties of the Cr 2 O 3 (0001) surface at finite temperatures.…”

“…Apart from being ubiquitous in nature, metal-oxide surfaces and interfaces find diverse technological applications and are being explored for potential use in future electronic devices. In particular, surfaces of magnetoelectric antiferromagnets such as Cr 2 O 3 possess an equilibrium surface magnetization, [1][2][3][4] making them suitable for use as active layers in electrically switchable magnetic nanostructures. 1 The Cr 2 O 3 (0001) surface has been a subject of many experimental [5][6][7][8][9][10][11] and theoretical 5,6,[12][13][14][15][16] studies, but its structure remains poorly understood.…”