Berlin 2015 – scientific programme

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DS: Fachverband Dünne Schichten

DS 28: Multiferroics II (joint session with DF)

DS 28.2: Talk

Wednesday, March 18, 2015, 15:30–15:45, EB 107

Probing ferroic order in thin film heterostructures with optical second harmonic generation — •Gabriele De Luca, Manfred Fiebig, and Morgan Trassin — ETH Zurich, Switzerland

The evidence of the electric field control on the antiferromagnetic ordering in multiferroic bismuth ferrite (BiFeO₃) [1] increased interest in low energy consumption logic and memory devices. However, to exploit such functionality for devices it is essential to attain deterministic control of ferromagnetism at the single domain scale. Therefore a ferromagnet/multiferroic heterostructure has been designed based on the combination of magnetoelectric coupling in BiFeO₃ (BFO) and exchange coupling between magnetic materials thus offering a new pathway for the electrical control of magnetism [2,3]. Here we show that second harmonic generation (SHG), can detect the distribution of ferroelectric domains in BFO thin films non-invasively and unimpeded by transport properties. We use epitaxial strain for engineering different types of BFO domain patterns that are characterized by SHG, showing a unique relation between the domain distribution and the film symmetry. We then manipulate the BFO film by voltage poling and demonstrate the sensitivity of the SHG process to this manipulation. The concept applied to BFO is transferable to other multiferroics compounds thus indicating the general feasibility of SHG as a characterization technique for heterostructures in which buried ferroelectricity plays a key role in the emergence of magnetoelectric coupling. 1.Zhao et al., Nat. Mat. 5, 823 (2006) 2.Heron et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 107, 217202 (2011) 3.Trassin et al., Phys. Rev. B 87, 134426 (2013)