Regensburg 2013 – scientific programme

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MA: Fachverband Magnetismus

MA 11: ThyssenKrupp Electrical Steel Dissertationspreis 2013 der AG Magnetismus

MA 11.3: Talk

Monday, March 11, 2013, 13:05–13:30, H3

Magnetoelectric coupling at metal surfaces — •Lukas Gerhard — Institute of Nanotechnology, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Hermann-von-Helmholtz-Platz 1, 76344 Eggenstein-Leopoldshafen

Magnetoelectric coupling offers the possibility to change the magnetic state of a material by an applied electric field. In the past, research in this field has focused on insulating materials such as complex multiferroic oxides because in bulk metallic systems, any external electric field is screened by the formation of a surface charge. In the topmost atomic layer of a metallic surface, however, this surface charge leads to small vertical displacements of the atomic cores. In thin films, this change of the interlayer distance in turn may lead to a modification of the magnetic order. In the framework of this thesis, we demonstrated electric-field induced reproducible switching of the magnetic order of a metallic system between two metastable states [1]. Strong magnetoelectric coupling on a few square nanometers was demonstrated at the surface of iron nanoislands on a copper substrate using the electric field of a scanning tunneling microscope. Electric-field induced phase transitions observed in two other systems show that magnetoelectric coupling is a fundamental effect in metallic magnetic thin films that may lead to the development of high-density non-volatile information storage devices made of metals.

[1] Magnetoelectric coupling at metal surfaces, L. Gerhard et al, Nature Nanotechnology 5 (2010)792-797