Ultralow Voltage Manipulation of Ferromagnetism

Spintronic elements based on spin transfer torque have emerged with potential for on‐chip memory, but they suffer from large energy dissipation due to the large current densities required. In contrast, an electric‐field‐driven magneto‐electric storage element can operate with capacitive displacement charge and potentially reach 1–10 µJ cm−2 switching operation. Here, magneto‐electric switching of a magnetoresistive element is shown, operating at or below 200 mV, with a pathway to get down to 100 mV. A combination of phase detuning is utilized via isovalent La substitution and thickness scaling in multiferroic BiFeO3 to scale the switching energy density to ≈10 µJ cm−2. This work provides a template to achieve attojoule‐class nonvolatile memories.

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