Magnetoelectric effect in ferromagnetic-ferroelectric tunneling junctions

¹ Key Laboratory of Low Dimensional Materials and Application Technology, Ministry of Education, Xiangtan University, Xiangtan, Hunan 411105, P.R. China
² ASIC R&D Center, School of Electronic Science and Engineering of National University of Defense Technology, Changsha, Hunan 410073, P.R. China
³ Pacific Geoscience Centre, Geological Survey of Canada, 9860 West Saanich Road, Sidney, British Columbia, Canada V8L 4B2

^a e-mail: mhtang@xtu.edu.cn

Received: 15 October 2010
Revised: 18 February 2011
Accepted: 8 June 2011
Published online: 18 August 2011

Abstract

The interfacial magnetoelectric (ME) effect in ferromagnetic-ferroelectric (FM-FE) tunneling junctions was investigated in this work. We found that the tunneling magnetoresistance (TMR) changes with the reversing of the electric polarization of the FE barrier. The theoretical results also indicated that TMR is strongly dependent on the electric polarization, the exchange splitting energy, the screening lengths in the electrodes, and the dielectric constant of the FE barrier layer. These results may provide some insights into switching magnetization electrically for spintronics and presenting independent tunneling states in a single junction for multi-value storage memory applications.